RFK Jr. claims he’ll make North Carolina’s presidential ballot
Claiming you have enough signatures to get onto the ballot by petition is not the same as an official determination by the state Board of Elections. Still, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign on Monday announced it had what it needed in North Carolina.
WRAL:
Kennedy’s We The People Party must collect 13,865 valid signatures before May 17 to be on the ballot under North Carolina election law. The campaign said it has collected more than 23,000 signatures, giving them a buffer in case some of the signatures are not counted.
The signatures have to be validated by elections officials before they become official. If validated, North Carolina would be the largest state that Kennedy has gained access. Kennedy is already on the ballot in Utah and has collected the needed signatures in New Hampshire, Nevada and Hawaii.
An individual candidate must collect more than 83,000 signatures to be on the ballot in North Carolina. But a party has a much lower threshold — 0.25% of the total number of voters who voted in the most recent general election for governor, which would be 13,865 — to place a nominee on state ballots. All the signatures must be from registered voters and at least 200 must come from at least three separate congressional districts in the state.
If Kennedy qualifies, it remains to be seen how this will impact the presidential contest in the state. There is a lot going on here. A lot of moving parts. The Biden campaign last week announced it was opening 10 field offices across the state. It is expanding its state staff. After a rere joint appearance with President Biden last week, Vice President Harris will return on Thursday for her fourth visit to the state to open an office in Charlotte.
Trump’s campaign has not announced when it will open field offices in the state. The Associated Press reported last week that some Republican Party leaders in battleground states raised concerns about a “skeleton” campaign, quoting Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
While former President Barack Obama was the last Democrat to win North Carolina in 2008, party leaders are trying once again to put the state in play. In 2020, Trump won the state by about 1.34 percent, which was his smallest margin of any state he won that year.
Political strategist and CEO of TargetSmart, Tom Bonier, notes that youth voter registration in the state is on a streak, even if Nate Cohn questions whether they will vote BIden.
From my front-row seat, I’m trying to ignore polls. Some of the fundamentals — blocking and tackling — are more important. Trump fatigue is setting in. A reporter at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice-president announcement found more Republicans than disgruntled Democrats supporting Kennedy. Anybody-but-Trump Republicans may find the anti-vaxxer candidate an appealing alternative.
Plus, Trump’ support in North Carolina’s metro areas is collapsing, according to Carolina Forward:
For over 15 years now, a majority of North Carolina’s counties have been shrinking in population, and many more are essentially stagnant. This is not a prediction or even a trend – it has already happened, and is accelerating. While North Carolina is also one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, the large majority of this growth has accrued to just a handful of urban and suburban counties – all of which are voting Democratic by increasing margins in each election cycle.
According to the U.S. Census, fully 41% of all of North Carolina’s eye-popping population growth as a state from 2010 to 2020 accrued to only two counties: Wake (22%) and Mecklenburg (19%). We have covered this phenomenon in detail here, here, here and here.
This would not be an issue if North Carolina’s heavily Republican, majority-white rural counties were also growing by leaps and bounds. But they are not – in fact, the opposite is happening. Nor are there clear opportunities for finding new GOP voters. The largest county where Republican margins are increasing even modestly is Davidson county, which ranks #17 in the state for population.
It gets worse for the GOP:
North Carolina Republicans are seeing a rapid implosion of their brand in not just North Carolina’s cities, but also its booming suburbs, which together are the source of nearly all the state’s growth. Worse, there is no clear way for them to address it. A brief recap of the two largest counties in the state demonstrates this in stark relief.
- Across Mecklenburg county, Republicans once routinely won and held legislative seats. Today, the party is almost extinct. The list of defeats is a who’s-who of the state political battles of the 2010s: Bob Rucho (who quit); Dan Bishop (also quit); Scott Stone (defeated 2018); Bill Brawley (defeated 2018, and again in 2022); Andy Dulin (defeated 2018); and Jeff Tarte (defeated 2018). Perhaps the most famous example, though, is Pat McCrory, who was the last Republican to win the mayorship of Charlotte for the foreseeable future. In 2023, the Republican mayoral candidate was defeated by 52 points.
- In Wake county, the situation is similar. Republicans have experienced a die-off of legislative candidates: Paul “Skip” Stam (quit); Nelson Dollar (defeated 2018); Marilyn Avila (defeated 2016); Tom Murry (defeated 2014); Chris Malone (defeated 2018); John Adcock (defeated 2018); Gary Pendleton (defeated 2016); Tamara Barringer (defeated 2018); John Alexander (quit). Wake Republicans are no longer capable of meaningfully competing at the county level in Wake, prompting the legislature to change the county’s electoral system instead.
After the 2024 election, there may no longer be a single Republican in Mecklenburg county’s state legislative delegation. Only two Republicans represent Mecklenburg in the state legislature today: Rep. John Bradford (HD-98) and Rep. Tricia Cotham (HD-105). Cotham, of course, was not elected as a Republican at all. Her race, while competitive, is quite likely to flip Democratic this fall. Bradford announced he was quitting the legislature altogether in 2023. Bradford’s seat, House District 98 (once held by Thom Tillis), is also a likely Democratic flip this fall.
And it’s not helping that the North Carolina Republican ticket will include the fringiest of the fringe candidates.
Biden winning in this state will take shaving the GOP margins not just in urban areas but in red, rural counties. TBD.
Update: Misattributed original photo. Swapped it out with another.
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