The NPR Politics Podcast - What to watch in the race for North Carolina's open Senate seat

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

North Carolina’s primary election is next week, and early voting is already underway. We discuss what to watch in the race for the state's open Senate seat and a competitive Democratic primary in the state's 4th congressional district.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Ashley Lopez, and WUNC Capitol Bureau Chief Colin Campbell.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And Colin Campbell of member station WUNC in North Carolina is here with us as well. Hi, Colin. Hey, Miles and Ashley. And today on the show, Voting in. this year's midterms is already underway in North Carolina, a state that has a really interesting Senate race brewing. So, Colin, this Senate seat is open because Republican Tom Tillis announced that he's not running for re-election. Tell us who is on the ballot to try to replace him. Yeah, so on the Republican side, we have Michael Watley, who's the Trump-endorist candidate in the

primary. He was previously the chairman of the Republican National Committee. He led the Republican Party in North Carolina before that. But it's his first run for elected office outside of party leadership roles. And on the Democratic side, we've got former governor Roy Cooper running. He served two terms left office about a year or so ago. And he is likely the candidate on the Democratic side. He's been in office for decades here, never lost an election. Democrats really hopeful that this could be the year that he could be the candidate that gets them across the finish line in a Senate race. Yeah. And Watley's also working with way less name recognition than obviously a governor. So this is going to be a little bit of an easier lift for Democrats than, you know, they would otherwise in a

state that, by the way, obviously, went to Trump in 2024. So this could be one of us several hopeful pickups for them this year. I will say it's a little surprising to me, an open seat in a competitive state that the Democratic and Republican primaries for the seat seem, if not wrapped up, but a little bit uncompetitive. Can you explain you have any thoughts on why that is, Colin? Yeah, I mean, voters here will have a choice on their ballot. There's multiple candidates in each party's primary. But this is a situation where both parties, I think, saw some pretty high stakes in this race and early on decided to anoint their candidates. When former Governor Roy Cooper jumped in on the Democratic side, that kind of cleared the field.

Some other candidates that had name recognition and were running dropped out at that point in the race. On the Republican side, there was a lot of interest when Tom Tillis announced last year that he was going to drop out of the race. Other members of Congress who are Republicans were interested. At one point, there was discussion of Laura Trump. The president's daughter-in-law might be interested in the race. Ultimately, the race there was for President Trump's endorsement. A lot of people talk to him, and as soon as he weighed in with Michael Watley being his pick for his endorsement, that caused all the other folks to sort of step aside and let Watley run.

Granted, there are two other candidates that are noteworthy in this primary, Michelle Morrow, who beat a Republican incumbent for state superintendent of public instruction a couple years ago. She's more on sort of the fringe extreme of the party. Same goes for Don Brown, who's an attorney whose claim to fame is that he represented some of the January 6th defendants in court. Both of those not expected to win, but certainly may test the value of the Trump. endorsement in a race where the Trump endorsed candidate Michael Watley, like Ashley said, is not that well known. Can you tell us a little bit more about Roy Cooper on the Democratic side? I mean, this is somebody who's a fairly popular two-term governor. But for people who aren't in North Carolina, I'm not sure we're super familiar with what he's known for. Or tell us a little bit more about him.

Yeah, he's sort of this old school kind of moderate North Carolina Democratic politician was an attorney from a small town around Rocky Mount. first stirruped in the state legislature back in the 80s, eventually became attorney general for the state, waited for 16 years in that role before he decided to run for governor and then had two terms where he's fairly popular. He's done well in the polls here. He still, despite some of the attack ads coming from the Republicans since he jumped in this race, still seems to have an edge here. He's got this sort of folksy approach that seems to play well here in North Carolina. Ashley, lay out how North Carolina fits into the map for the broader Senate. I guess when you think about Democrats' potential chances for retaking the Senate, how does North Carolina play into that? I will say in general, the Senate is going to be a tougher climb for Democrats than, say, the House. North Carolina is sort of essential if Democrats are going to flip some seats because North Carolina has a lot of independent voters.

It's more of a purple state than anything. If you look at registration numbers, Republicans now have like a little bit more of an edge than they did a few years ago. But it's pretty much neck and neck in terms of the parties. where voter registration is really growing is among independent voters. So this is a place where Democrats, if they are going to play a little better among independent swing voters, you know, more centrist voters, this is a state where they could potentially do really well. And as I mentioned, they have an upper hand here. The Democratic candidate just has way more name recognition. So if Democrats do want to take the Senate, this is sort of a must win. Yeah, they haven't won a Senate seat in North Carolina since 2008 every time they try. And so far they've been falling short. But with Roy Cooper as the candidate, there's a lot of optimism that I'm hearing from Democrats here. Regardless, this is it going to be a really expensive race because there are just so few Senate races around the country that are this competitive. I've heard anywhere from half a billion to maybe even a full billion dollars could be spent on this race before all of a sudden done.

Yeah, and 2008 was sort of a weird year. It was the year that Barack Obama won North Carolina. It was just like a sweep for Democrats. And that has not been seen in North Carolina in a really long time. Not to say that that's not possible, but it's just more of like 2008 was more of a weird thing. Got it. Okay. So Democrats need to net four Senate seats to potentially take over the Senate. I'm just trying to play out the math here.

And North Carolina potentially could be one of those four in addition to the two they need to defend. I want to talk a little bit more about President Trump's endorsement of Michael Watley, Colin. How do you think Trump is going to play into this race come the general? I think Trump is sort of the key figure in this race. Michael Watley, you know, really is a Trump surrogate in many ways. He's on cable news all the time defending the president's actions. One interviewer asked Wattley, if there's anywhere he disagrees on Trump, any issue. And Wattley's response was not in public. I'm not going to disagree with Trump in public. You already see Roy Cooper coming out attacking Wattley for pretty much anything that's coming out of the Trump administration, whether it's issues around the economy, around immigration and ICE and Border Patrol actions that have taken place some in this state. It's really going to all come down to Trump-related messaging, I think, on both sides in this particular race.

Is there anything to be gleaned? I mean, voting started more than a week ago there. Is there anything to be gleaned from the early voting numbers at this point? You know, with the primary not having a whole lot of action between the different U.S. Senate candidates in either party, I was kind of expecting this to be a low turnout primary, but so far that's not actually been the case. But going back to the 2022 midterm, the last one here, we're actually up a fair bit on early voting so far in terms of the number of ballots have been cast. And the majority of those ballots so far have been in the Democratic primary. Now, North Carolina is an open primary state.

So if you're an unaffiliated voter, which is actually the most popular registration option in the state in recent years, you can choose whether you want to vote in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary. And a lot of people seem to be choosing the Democratic primary, which would seem to be an indication that people are just really eager to vote, particularly on the Democratic side this year, even if the voting they're doing right now is not deciding any sort of partisan contest. What we've been seeing a lot in like elections this year and last year, special elections, primaries, governorships is that Democrats and independent voters, in particular, are very fired up for elections this year. They're unhappy with the direction of the country. Immigration, you know, that has been for a long time a benefit to Republicans, but right now, after what happened in Minneapolis, it's a liability for them. And voters are very motivated to vote against Republicans on this issue. And we've been seeing independence time and time again sort of in polling sort of side with Democrats on a lot of issues.

Well, and I keep thinking, Ashley, about the reporting you brought to the pot a couple of weeks go from that focus group that you watched where majority of the focus group participants said that they had had their daily life impacted in some way by ice activity. And I feel like North Carolina is a place where it's not a border state, so you wouldn't necessarily assume that. But there has been a fair amount of enforcement activity there, right, Colin? Yeah, we had a pretty big border patrol and ice enforcement for about a week or so last fall in Charlotte. Some of those agents came up here to the Raleigh-Durham area. You know, there was a point where a lot of immigrant-related businesses shut down. Some construction sites were shut down for a few days during that happening. So certainly

that issue is top of mind here for a lot of voters, particularly those in the middle who may not like what they've seen from immigration enforcement actions so far, even if they'd like to see stronger border protections and a better immigration enforcement system. So what does Whatley do from there then? I guess as a candidate who is so directly tied to President Trump, do you expect him to separate himself in some way over the next? eight months from President Trump? Or how is he going to go about this? I think that's going to be really the challenge for Whatley, is to what extent he can separate himself from Trump when he's been with the president on just about every single issue that matters

to voters at this point. What will be interesting to see is I think the Watley campaign is hoping that they can change the messaging around, that they can focus more on the economy and hopes that the economy does better as we get closer and closer to November. And I think they're also going to try to go on the attack with the amount of ad spending that's going into this race, trying to paint Roy Cooper as soft on crime. The issue that they seem to really be pointing to and is probably going to be a key factor as we get closer to November's election is this incident that happened last year on the Charlotte Light Rail System. A Ukrainian immigrant woman was attacked at random with a knife. And the suspect in that case has a pretty lengthy criminal history.

And Watley's campaign is trying to tie that criminal history to policies by Governor Cooper when he was governor, making the claim essentially that this guy was out of jail because of actions the governor has taken. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that we've seen so far that directly connects the dots on that, but certainly we're going to see that incident come up again and again in this race. All right. We can leave it there for now more in just a moment. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org.

And we're back. And we've been talking about the Senate race in North Carolina. But I want to turn for a moment to another competitive race that's unfolding right now in the primary there, which is for the fourth congressional district. This is a safe Democratic seat, but there is currently a competitive Democratic primary going on. Conlin, can you tell us what's going on there? So this is one of those primaries that's really going to tell us something about the direction of the Democratic Party's electorate in the state, particularly in a deep blue urban district like this one that's centered around Durham and Chapel Hill. The incumbent congresswoman there is Valerie Fushie, longtime sort of establishment figure.

in Democratic politics. She's seeking a third term, but her opponent is a Durham County Commissioner by the name of Nita Alam, who ran against Fushi a couple years ago the first time she ran in the primary and lost. Alam is endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and a number of other groups on the left that want to sort of steer this seat into a more leftward direction on issues like ICE and issues like Israel and Middle East policy. It will be interesting to watch. There's been a lot of outside money around this race that seems to be mostly going toward Alam side of things. So this will be one to see whether Democrats are willing to go against an incumbent who's been around for a while and try to get a new voice in there who's younger and who's more into the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. Yeah, I feel like Ashley, one of the things that was interesting to me about just like watching this race is just that Alam is running on this abolish ICE campaign, which I feel like a couple months ago it felt like I wasn't seeing anywhere. And I feel like if she's able to win this primary running on that message, I don't know. that to me is, I don't know, it's interesting for a lot of different reasons. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not surprising because like this is what primaries are, right? It is it is a group of voters that are usually more engaged, the ideological partisans of the party sort of hashing out where they want the party to go. And especially when you have safe seats like this, which there are a lot. And we could talk about that.

This is like kind of the safest place to hash these conversations out. And so I'm not surprised. because if the base of the party has been saying they don't like the direction that the party has been going when it comes to immigration, there were a lot of complaints from the base of the Democratic Party that the Harris campaign, for example, was not vociferously defending immigrants and Democrats on the Hill are not doing enough to fight back against ICE. Like, you know, the conversation hasn't been to fully defund or abolish ICE on the Hill. And that has really angered a lot of base Democratic voters. So I'm not surprised to see this at all. It will be interesting to see how many. of these safe Democratic seats lose their incumbents because that is a sign that the base is really angry and they want to see the party move in a different direction. But if you're going to see fights over stuff like this, it's going to be in a safe Democratic seat. But it does have the potential to go to run into the general election. I think if Nita Along wins this race, you're going to

see Republicans really try to tie Roy Cooper's campaign in the U.S. Senate race to her candidacy. And he's among the many establishment Democrats who are endorsing incumbent Valerie Fushi in this race. So that'll be one to watch if she does end up pulling off an upset here. And Ashley, another storyline to watch in North Carolina is that this is one of the states that redrew its House map in response to President Trump asking Republican-controlled states to try to redraw their maps to make it easier for Republicans to keep control of the House of Representatives. How could that impact everything this year? So North Carolina was already pretty gerrymandered for Republicans.

So they really just took a map at one seat that was held by a long-term, Democrat there in the House. And so it's just one extra seat, but I will say this. Like, broadly speaking, this arms race in redistricting has yet to yield any sort of meaningful edge for either party. But I did do some reporting recently that what it did do was it created more safe seats in Congress. So each party just has more safe seats. That means there are fewer competitive races heading into the general. The most voting power many voters are going to have is going to be in these primaries. And, you know, that's unfortunate in some ways because fewer voters participate in primaries. It's like a not as mixed, right? There's not as many low propensity

voters in primaries. There's not as much racial diversity. These voters tend to be older, wealthier. So it's and as I mentioned, ideologically partisan people. So what parties are doing right now is just creating a situation where fewer voters have sort of meaningful voting power when they come into November. And North Carolina has been going down that road for a while and they just sort of added another safe seat for the party. I mean, all of this is dependent on how well Democrats do. If this is like a wave election where it's like a plus 20 point swing in one direction, like that could, you know, this could all be null and void. But those things don't tend to happen all the time. Yeah, the district that got redrawn in North Carolina is the first district up in the northeastern corner. It was the last cycle, the only toss up race in the entire state. now that's been redrawn to be a Republican-friendly seat, so we have no toss-up congressional races in the state. Granted, Congressman Don Davis, the Democrat who's the incumbent up there, is still running for re-election.

He's hoping that having that vintage of incumbency plus maybe a good year for Democrats could maybe let him win a victory in a district that's really drawn to stack the odds against him at this point. I feel like we look at Congress and we're like, why doesn't this work really well? And then you're like, wait, we put a group of the most ideologically, like, I don't know, like, it's. I don't know. It just makes so much sense when you think of it that way that like there's only these handful of competitive districts. And generally, it's a group of people who are picked by the most ideologically angry people on both sides. Of course they're not going to be incentivized to compromise generally. I don't know. Yeah. And I just mentioned they're like these voters are older and wealthier and what does Congress look like. Yeah. I mean, it is like it is very easy to see it where

this all leads. And as Colin just mentioned like this is another example of like one competitive seat where voters, at least in one region, had the ability to, you know, decide who controls Congress because, you know, so few seats decide what party has power in Congress. You know, that was taken away from some voters. But I will say, like, the majority of American states don't have competitive seats. United America, which this is like their hobby horse, they have been pushing for primary reform for years. They told me that something like 32 states don't have a single competitive seat in Congress coming this election. So you're a good company, Colin. So one other storyline, I guess, to watch in North Carolina as voting picks up over the next week ahead of Tuesday's Election Day. This is the first election cycle after some pretty major changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature in North Carolina to change who actually controls how voting is done in the state. Colin, can you explain what happened last year? Yeah, so this is a state where the governor gets to appoint the majority or used to get to appoint the majority of the state board of elections that oversees elections and administration. That changed last year when the legislature decided to take that power from the governor, instead give it to the state auditor who, oh, by the way, just happened to become a Republican in the last election. So now Republicans have a majority on the board that administers elections here in North Carolina.

And so we're going to see a lot more GOP-friendly decisions coming out of that board. We already saw even just in this primary the decisions about early voting sites and hours, fewer places opening on Sundays, which is popular with black voters that do souls to the polls campaign, fewer voting locations on college. campuses where young voters are likely to come out. So we're going to see some of the rules and processes around this sort of handled in a way that advantages Republicans, whereas the last few cycles, Democrats were in charge of that process and those decisions. All right, well, we can leave it there for now. As we mentioned, voting continues in North Carolina through next Tuesday. Colin, thank you so much for walking us through all this. Thanks for having me. And tomorrow, it's the state of the union. So we will be in your feed a little bit later than

usual with analysis after the president's done talking and after the Democrats' response. Make sure to hit that follow button so you don't miss that or any of the other great podcast we have come out this week. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org.