Congressman Dan Bishop announced recently that he is running for North Carolina Attorney General. A Machiavellian operator, Bishop carries himself with a touch of gleeful villainy. He joins a state ticket that will almost certainly be led by Donald Trump for president, and a third extremist, Mark Robinson, for the position of North Carolina Governor. The Republicans plan to field the most extreme ticket this state has seen in generations. The answer to the question of whether this gambit will pay off is sadly unclear.
The extremism of a Bishop-Trump-Robinson ticket would almost be unprecedented. Even in 1964 when Barry Goldwater lost this Jim Crow state, Republican nominated a moderate-leaning candidate, former prosecutor Robert Gavin, for governor. The 2024 ticket will be undiluted in its radicalism. Each of the party’s leading candidates uses incendiary appeals to attract intense loyalty from the Republican base, and then repays their voters’ devotion by waging harsh warfare against the American Left. This belligerent approach to politics has succeeded in North Carolina by driving Republican turnout to levels high enough to overwhelm changing demographics in the state. And that, not gerrymandering, is why Tar Heel politics are shaded red instead of blue.
Despite its headline triumphs, the divide-and-motivate strategy has carried a sub rosa cost for Republicans. The ultra-divisive tone that’s thrilled white conservatives has also caused swing voters in the state to vote more Democratic. Joe Biden won independents by 4% and Cheri Beasley improved on his margin by carrying the Unaffiliated vote by six full points. This almost never used to happen in North Carolina, and at least based upon a small sample size the bluing of N.C. independents seems to be an ongoing trend.
But Republicans have still won all but one North Carolina election since 2010. Because, although they’ve suffered inarguable attrition among swing voters, they’ve persuaded thousands of previously inactive white voters to come to the polls and vote ardently for MAGA. Since 2008, Republican turnout has risen from the low-70-percent range to a staggering 81%, with the consequence that the GOP now accounts for a significantly larger share of voter turnout than voter registration in the state. The politics of confrontation have sown rewards.
This is the calculation Republicans have made in (probably) nominating Robinson, Bishop, and Trump. Such an extreme ticket will almost certainly repel even more independent voters than Republicans have lost in the last two election cycles–and Republican leaders must know this. But the extremist slate will also offer their core base a ticket unparalleled in its conservative purity. Thus, the base may respond with the gusto of a zealot, and if the strategy generates this once again stimulates their passions, we’ll see an era of intensifying extremism in North Carolina politics.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
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