Can Beasley become NC’s first Black U.S. Senator? Three views on what she needs to do
That Cheri Beasley rose from a district court judge in Cumberland County to the state Court of Appeals to Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court tells you something: She ‘s got talent.
But can the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate make her next big step up over all of this: a midterm election with the Democratic president saddled with a low approval rating; a Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and backed by outside money that will be used to pound her with negative ads; the fact that a North Carolina Democrat has not won a U.S. Senate race since 2008 and that a Black woman has never been elected to the U.S. Senate from the South?
I put that daunting question to three Black North Carolinians who view the race from three interesting perspectives: state Sen. Dan Blue, a longtime politician; the Rev. William Barber II, an activist minister; and William Sturkey, a UNC professor who studies the history of race in the South.
They all gave the same answer: “Yes, if.”
Blue, a Wake County Democrat and the Senate minority leader, acknowledged that Beasley is running against a headwind that favors Republicans in the midterms. But he noted that Democrat John Edwards defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth in the 1998 midterms when President Bill Clinton was being investigated for his involvement with Monica Lewinsky.
“The conventional wisdom has a role to play, but just because that’s what normally happens doesn’t mean that’s what always happens,” Blue said. “It’s all about the relations you build with the voters.”
For Blue, Beasley can win if she is seen as “looking out for the interests of average, everyday people” and advocates for “an economy that works for everybody.”
But he said she must be careful to be seen as a moderate compared to Budd, whose base is Trump’s most loyal supporters. “You’ve got to talk to the other 65 percent of the electorate,” Blue said, “not just the right wing of the Republican Party, as Trump tends to do.”
Barber, the Goldsboro minister who led the “Moral Mondays” protests against the Republican-led General Assembly, said Beasley should champion the state’s financially struggling people, Black and white. He said 45 percent of North Carolinians are poor or low wealth, a share of the electorate that he said is “the sleeping giant that needs to be awoken.”
Barber, a former head of the state NAACP, said Beasley should run on guaranteeing workers a living wage, paid family leave, access to health care and economic justice.
“If any candidate is afraid to say the word ‘poor’ and can only say the word ‘middle class,’ then that candidate will not deserve to win because they are willing to write off nearly half the state,” said Barber, now co-chair of the national Poor People’s Campaign.
The problem, or course, is that the poor and low wealth voters tend not to turn out, especially in a midterm election. But Barber said they’ll come if they hear someone speaking to them. “Many people don’t vote because nobody talks to them directly,” he said.
Sturkey, the UNC historian, said Beasley’s campaign should build on her being a candidate whose election “would be absolutely historic.”
But he worries that Beasley will be drawn into a familiar Democratic posture – fending off Republican attacks. “The Democrats are terrible at being on offense,” he said.
Going on the offense means appealing to people’s hopes instead of their fears, talking about kitchen table issues rather than the border wall and unfounded election fraud.
“For Democrats, it seems pretty clear the way to win is to inspire people,” he said. “They have to have a hopeful message and I think that they can win. Barack Obama won with that.”
There’s no way to measure the power of inspiration, but Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina offers a guide regarding Black voters, who were inspired by the chance to elect the nation’s first Black president. That year, Black voter turnout in North Carolina hit 73%, exceeding the white turnout of 71%, a margin that likely accounted for Obama becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
In the 2020 election, Black voter turnout was 68% compared to 79% for whites. In the last midterm election in 2018, the margin was 48% Black turnout to 56% white turnout.
If Beasley is going to win, she’ll need to inspire more people to vote. That will mean answering today’s “yes, ifs” with a rousing “yes, we can.”
This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 4:30 AM.