He saw ‘a chance’ in Lara Trump’s NC Senate talk. Now he has the biggest endorsement.

The most important endorsement of North Carolina’s 2022 U.S. Senate race was delivered Saturday night — and even the candidate on the receiving end didn’t get much more than 15 minutes’ notice.

“I was asked to be at the end of the photo line, so no problem there,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Budd of his meeting with former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening at North Carolina Republicans’ state convention.

“He was there. Lara (Trump) came out, and they told us what they wanted to do and about their support. Been hoping, praying for it, but it became a reality.”

Donald Trump is known for being unpredictable and, without advance knowledge of what the nation’s most popular Republican might say in his first public appearance in months, Budd’s team created an array of responses.

“We prepared for 10 contingencies, good news or bad news. We were ready for stuff,” said Jonathan Felts, a senior advisor to Budd. “When Ted came out of the private meeting, he gave me the good news.”

Minutes later, Lara Trump was telling the crowd that she would not run for Senate in 2022, and both she and her father-in-law endorsed Budd, a three-term congressman from Davie County and, perhaps, the least known of the top three Republicans in the field.

“Just as he’s not well known in the state, nationally he doesn’t have a big profile. A Trump endorsement will certainly help that,” said strategist Doug Heye, a former staffer for U.S. Sen. Richard Burr and communications chief for the Republican National Committee. “A lot of people Saturday heard about him and that’s because of Trump.”

Budd, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker and former Charlotte mayor and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory are among the five Republicans vying for the nomination to replace Burr, a Republican who is not seeking a fourth term in 2022.

Brunswick County Commissioner Marty Cooke and former Defense Department employee Jen Banwart are also in the race.

McCrory, with a huge edge in name identification with Republican voters, is seen as the current front-runner. Walker won a straw poll of delegates at the convention, he announced.

But it is Budd — who has been endorsed by the Club for Growth and now Trump — who could gain with such a high-profile announcement. Donations to his campaign accelerated immediately after Trump’s announcement.

“Clearly Ted Budd’s going to get a bounce out of it. How meaningful it is and how sustainable it is is yet to be determined,” said Dan Barry, a former chairman of the Union County GOP. “Endorsements are valuable, but they’re not the leading indicator.”

Budd, 49, acknowledged as much Saturday evening as Trump boarded his plane and headed home. North Carolina Republicans, most of whom have never had the chance to cast a ballot for Budd, will decide the nominee.

“This is a great opportunity, but now’s the time for the hard work,” Budd said. “Now it’s about getting out across the state, meeting folks and letting them know what I’m about.”

Who is Ted Budd?

Budd graduated from Appalachian State, got a master’s in business administration from Wake Forest and a master’s in educational seminary from Dallas Theological Seminary. He met his wife, Mary Kate, on a college mission trip to the soon-to-collapse Soviet Union in 1991. They have three children who were home-schooled, which Budd said he’s been doing since “before it was cool.”

His family owns The Budd Group, a large facilities service company that handles janitorial, landscape and maintenance needs and is based in Winston-Salem. Budd said he sold his share in the company to his brother in 2003, ending his financial interest in the company.

Budd, who owns a gun shop and shooting range outside of Winston-Salem, has a net worth of more than $6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“I’m a small businessman who was so fed up with the liberals’ attacks on our faith, our families and our way of life that I ran for Congress,” Budd said in his Senate launch video.

After three terms in the House, he entered the Senate race in late April — after North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced he would not join the race and after conversations with Lara Trump gave him a good idea that she wouldn’t either. He would not have run if Trump did.

He did so with a tongue-in-cheek campaign video that included a marching band, a monster truck crushing cars labeled the “liberal agenda,” and clips of Trump praising him.

He took aim at Democrats and liberals — though not literally, as he passed up holding a gun while noting in the video that he owns a gun shop — mentioning the faded Dr. Seuss controversy, defunding the police and stopping America from becoming a “woke, socialist wasteland.”

Budd has been eager to engage in the culture wars, recently pushing legislation to ban critical race theory — saying corporate America, big tech and Hollywood are pushing the ideology. It’s a topic Trump raised in Greenville, too.

“We need to teach them that this nation is special,” Budd said of children. “We need to teach them that our country is blessed by God.”

Election fight, Senate race

A member of the House Freedom Caucus, Budd backed Trump’s efforts not to certify the 2020 presidential election results. He signed onto a brief before the Supreme Court. He wrote a letter to other members of the delegation, asking them to back Trump’s efforts.

“The people of North Carolina chose Donald Trump to be reelected. We should not allow the lack of election integrity in other states (to) deprive us of the president that we voted for,” he wrote in the letter dated Dec. 22.

Budd voted against certification of the results from Arizona and Pennsylvania, the only two states that reached a full vote in the House after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

In his endorsement speech, Trump mentioned Budd’s willingness to fight as part of the reason for his backing.

“He will fight like nobody fights,” Trump said.

Budd compared his 2016 primary victory — a relative unknown, he emerged from a field of 17 candidates, aided by heavy outside spending from investment Club for Growth Action, a political action committee that focuses on limited government economic issues — to Trump’s own surprising 2016 primary win over a similarly sized field of Republicans.

In 2018, in a district targeted by Democrats, Budd defeated Kathy Manning, who was well funded. Manning won Walker’s old seat in Congress in 2020 after North Carolina’s congressional districts were redrawn and after Walker declined to run again. Budd’s district was much less competitive, so he spent 2020 campaigning for other Republicans, including Trump, across the state.

That effort was noticed by Lara Trump, Felts said, and the two have been in communication.

“Some folks viewed Lara’s potential candidacy as a negative to overcome. Ted saw it as a chance to further engage her and her father,” Felts said. “She certainly earned the right to go through her decision-making process.”

McCrory and Walker blamed former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who previously represented far-western North Carolina in Congress, for pushing Donald Trump to endorse Budd — with both calling it “bad advice.”

Heye said the Trump endorsement signifies Budd’s relationship with Meadows. A Meadows spokesman declined comment for this story.

In a statement, McCrory, pointing to votes Budd has taken, called him “a Washington insider who has done more to oppose the Trump agenda than anyone in this race.”

“If supporters of President Trump want his agenda to be supported in the US Senate, they should not vote for Ted Budd, who has opposed him at every turn — and who would lose to the far-left next November,” McCrory said.

Budd voted with Trump 91.8% of the time, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.com. Walker voted with Trump 94.3% of the time, according to the analysis. McCrory and Walker shied away from direct criticism of Trump and cast themselves as more solid picks to defend parts of the Trump agenda in the Senate.

“The best option for them is to be out of the firing line. Veiled shots are one thing,” Heye said, in reference to subtle digs Trump made against the other candidates in his speech. “If he goes after them or either one of them forcefully and directly, that provides a different challenge.”

Among the Budd votes that were in opposition to Trump, per the analysis, were two votes against large COVID-19 relief packages in 2020 and against $2,000 stimulus payments. Two of the votes took place after the November election, where Budd made his public stance with Trump.

Budd’s campaign said the insinuation that Meadows or anyone else was able to convince Trump is insulting to the former president.

“(McCrory) called the president (Trump) an idiot, said he doesn’t know who is supporting him,” said Michael Leuthy, Budd’s general consultant. “The idea that Trump doesn’t know who is the most Trump supportive candidate is laughable.”

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.

This story was originally published June 10, 2021 at 2:28 PM.

Brian Murphy

The News & Observer

Brian Murphy is the editor of NC Insider, a state government news service. He previously covered North Carolina’s congressional delegation and state issues from Washington, D.C. for The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and The Herald-Sun. He grew up in Cary and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill. He previously worked for news organizations in Georgia, Idaho and Virginia. Reach him at bmurphy@ncinsider.com.