Newby leads incumbent Beasley by fewer than 4,000 votes in race for NC chief justice
Republican candidates won all five contested seats on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and a seat on the state Supreme Court, and led Wednesday in tight races for two more Supreme Court seats.
Judge Paul Newby pulled ahead of Chief Justice Cheri Beasley by fewer than 4,000 votes out of nearly 5.4 million votes cast late in the evening Tuesday in the race for the top seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Newby, the only Republican on the Supreme Court, had just a bit more than 50% of the vote with all precincts reporting.
Newby isn’t prepared to make a statement due to the number of outstanding ballots yet to be counted, wrote David Osborne, Newby’s campaign coordinator, in an email Wednesday morning.
“Tens of thousands of North Carolinians still have not had their votes counted and we are making sure that every vote is tallied and every voice is heard. Once we have counted every ballot we are confident about the outcome of this race,” wrote Beasley campaign manager Benjamin Woods in an email.
There are 117,000 outstanding absentee by-mail ballots, according to the state elections board. They must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by Nov. 12 to be counted.
Newby has been on the Supreme Court since 2004.
Beasley is the first African American woman to serve as chief justice in the state. She served as an associate judge for seven years before Gov. Roy Cooper appointed her as chief justice in 2019.
NC Supreme Court races, Seat 2 and 3
Two Court of Appeals judges, Republican Phil Berger Jr. and Democrat Lucy Inman, faced off for associate justice Seat 2.
Berger had nearly 51% and led the race by more than 74,000 votes.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Inman’s campaign hadn’t conceded.
“Election officials are rightfully focused on counting every eligible vote now. Counting requires patience,” said Claire Hagan, with Inman’s campaign.
Inman was elected to the Court of Appeals in 2014 after serving four years as a special superior court judge appointed by then-Gov. Beverly Perdue.
Berger, the son of state Senate leader Phil Berger, was elected to the appellate court in 2016 after serving as an administrative law judge for two years and a district attorney for eight years for Rockingham County.
Republican Tamara Barringer, an associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, won the third race with more than 51% of the vote or more than 130,000 votes.
Barringer challenged Mark Davis, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Cooper to fill the vacancy left by Beasley’s chief justice appointment.
Davis served on the Court of Appeals for seven years after serving as general counsel to Perdue for two years and as a special deputy attorney general for five years.
Barringer, who lives in Cary, was a state senator for eight years until she lost her reelection bid in 2018.
The Supreme Court currently has six Democrats and one Republican, Newby. If all Republican candidates win, Democrats’ majority would shrink to a 4-3 split.
The court includes one chief justice and six associate justices who serve eight-year terms. The court decides whether challenged laws should be struck down and sets precedents for a variety of legal issues that affect criminal trials, child custody battles, business liability and other issues.
Cases expected to come before the Supreme Court include a challenge to the program that seeks to expand school choice through private school vouchers; voter redistricting; and death penalty litigation.
The six candidates raised more than $6.7 million in the three races as of Monday. Beasley raised the most, bringing in nearly $2 million, more than twice that of challenger Newby.
In total, Democratic Supreme Court candidates raised $4.5 million compared to the Republicans’ $2.2 million.
Court of Appeals
Republican candidates swept all five of the 15 Court of Appeals seats up for election.
The court hears most of the appeals from the state’s district and superior courts.
Unlike the Supreme Court races, the leading candidates held leads of 124,000 votes or more.
Unofficial results showed:
▪ Republican April Wood, a District Court judge from Davidson County, won Seat 4 with nearly 52% of the vote against Democrat Tricia Shields, an attorney and Campbell University Law School instructor.
▪ District Court Judge Fred Gore, a Republican from Brunswick County, won Seat 5 with more than 51% of the vote against Democrat Lora Christine Cubbage, a Guilford County Superior Court judge.
▪ Incumbent Republican Judge Chris Dillon won Seat 6 with 52% of the vote against Gray Styers, a Democrat and Raleigh attorney.
▪ Union County Superior Court Judge Jeff Carpenter, a Republican, unseated Judge Reuben Young, a Democrat who was appointed by Cooper in 2019. Carpenter had nearly 52% of the vote in the Seat 7 race.
▪ Jefferson Griffin, a Republican and Wake County District Court judge, unseated Judge Chris Brook, a Democrat appointed by Cooper in 2019, to win Seat 13 with more than 51% of the vote.
The court, which currently has eight Democrats and seven Republicans, will shift to a Republican majority with a 10-4 split or 11-3 split, depending on whether Berger or Inman moves up to the Supreme Court and leaves one seat open.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 9:06 PM.
