At present, Republicans are favored to win North Carolina’s fall Senate election. But the state’s competitiveness dictates that even with the advantages of an off-year cycle and a center-right electorate, savvy Republican candidates should not take victory for granted. True, Thom Tillis defeated Kay Hagan with a meager strategy, but even he showed the discipline to stay steady down the stretch while the political environment collapsed around the incumbent. Political geniuses though they are not, Pat McCrory and Ted Budd have landed on different approaches for winning this Senate seat.

I strongly suspect that McCrory’s strategy is the product of Paul Shumaker’s keen political mind. Shumaker, a political consultant who has run five winning Senate races, now serves as the chief strategist for Pat McCrory’s campaign. McCrory himself has abysmal political instincts and no discipline. But with Shumaker, he has a seasoned hand to guide him in his fourth statewide race.

What plan has Shumaker (or whomever else) devised? Panders to the right wing modulated by subtle, tentative nods to the state’s more centrist electorate. McCrory’s rhetoric has emphasized what he invariably calls the “Biden Border Crisis” for over a year, nodding to the ardently Nativist wing of the Republican Party. But he has also acknowledged that Biden won the 2020 election fairly–O! What a piteously low bar–and has said that he will support Mitch McConnell over Rick Scott for Majority Leader should Republicans take the Senate. The latter may turn out to be a savvier move than even McCrory thought, given that Scott has proposed a hideously unpopular scheme to raise taxes on over 100 million Americans including seniors.

In essence, McCrory is following the Median Voter Theorem, which posits that the candidate positioned closest to the center of the electorate is likely to win the election. Ted Budd will have none of it. As his recent, non-Club-for-Growth-funded Senate campaign ad demonstrated, Budd plans to rampage into the general election with MAGA flags flying. Budd’s theory of the electorate seems simple: North Carolina went for Trump, therefore a Trumpy candidate will win this Senate race. He plans to supercharge Trumpist voters in rural and exurban areas like the region he represents in Congress and win the election on turnout, swing voters be damned. Or perhaps he assumes that he’ll receive enough swing voter support based solely on Joe Biden’s unpopularity that a polarizing campaign won’t cost him the suburbs. It’s a fair bet.

Either McCrory’s or Budd’s strategy could carry Republicans to victory in a right-of-center year in a center-right state. Cheri Beasley stands in their way as a formidable obstacle, but both right-wing and moderate-conservative candidates have won in North Carolina. Having conceded that, I’ll note that every U.S. Senator from North Carolina who was elected in this century has fit within the boundaries of mainstream politics. Ted Budd the warrior could very well win, but if I were a Republican–perish the thought–I’d have more confidence in Paul Shumaker’s latest candidate creation.

Alexander H. Jones

Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.