Democrats are targeting these NC races to break GOP supermajority. They have a shot | Opinion
Two years ago, North Carolina Democrats had a poor showing in races up and down the ballot. The one silver lining — or so they thought — was that Republicans fell one vote short of an outright supermajority in the state legislature.
Just a few months later, however, Rep. Tricia Cotham’s surprise defection to the GOP solidified a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate for the first time since 2018.
Democrats at the state and national level have a plan to break through that firewall this election cycle. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which helps elect Democrats to statehouses across the country, announced Thursday that it will prioritize 14 races in North Carolina as “spotlight” races in 2024. So far, the DLCC has invested $15,000 into the races, and the committee says more investments are coming soon.
“We are focused on continuing to gain ground this cycle, knowing that majorities are built one seat at a time,” DLCC spokesperson Abhi Rahman told me in a statement. “We know it’s essential to break the Republican supermajority and return veto power to the next Democratic governor in the state to provide a check on MAGA extremism, and that goal is within reach in 2024 with the right investments.”
Some of these races are already promising for Democrats, while others will require the party to win in less favorable territory. According to the Civitas Partisan Index, which uses past election results to measure a district’s base partisan leanings, five of the 14 “spotlight” races are considered toss-ups, six of them lean Republican and three lean Democratic.
On paper, it seems like it wouldn’t take much for Democrats to break through the supermajority. If Republicans lose just one seat in either the House or Senate, they’ll no longer have the votes to override a veto without at least one Democrat’s help.
Still, that’s only if Democrats also manage to hang on to all of the seats they currently hold. To do so, they’ll have to show a marked improvement from 2022, when several Democratic incumbents lost in districts they were favored to win. Notably, the three “spotlight” races that the Civitas index classifies as “lean Democratic” are districts that were represented by Democrats before 2022 and now have a Republican incumbent.
But new maps drawn to favor Republican lawmakers make this a bit more complicated. Several of the “spotlight” races feature Democratic incumbents who have been drawn into redder districts, or open seats currently represented by Democrats that now lean slightly more Republican.
For example, Senate District 42 in Mecklenburg County is currently represented by Rachel Hunt, who is running for lieutenant governor. Hunt won that district in 2022 — and Democrat Jeff Jackson represented it before her — but it is now more favorable for Republicans. Similarly, House District 73 and Senate Districts 13 and 18 are Democratic seats that will be tougher to defend under new maps.
The 14 seats aren’t Democrats’ only opportunities to break the supermajority, though. In total, the Civitas index ranks eight seats as true toss-ups and another 28 seats as just slightly favoring one party or another (most of them lean Republican). Notably, all but two of the 170 legislative districts across the state will have a Democrat on the ballot, which gives them a better chance of flipping seats than in 2022, when the party left a quarter of all state House and Senate races uncontested.
Democrats have their work cut out for them. The House and Senate maps are drawn with the explicit goal of safeguarding a Republican advantage in the legislature, which makes the races less competitive and the outcomes less responsive to voters. Even if voters make their frustrations with the GOP supermajority known at the ballot box, it may not make a difference in this election cycle or even the next. Perhaps that’s why Rahman, the DLCC’s spokesperson, told me that the committee has a “multi-cycle strategy that will set us up for success in North Carolina in the long term.”
Breaking through the supermajority in 2024 isn’t out of the question. But Democrats may find that the real challenge is preventing Republicans from picking up more seats under maps that are designed to help them do exactly that.
This story was originally published March 31, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Democrats are targeting these NC races to break GOP supermajority. They have a shot | Opinion."
