News & Observer endorsement: Our choices for NC Senate primaries in Wake County
Now that the courts have throttled the Republican-led General Assembly into drawing fairer legislative districts, the GOP may lose in state Senate District 18, its last foothold in Wake County.
Republican state Sen. John Alexander decided not to seek re-election once the new lines removed the Republican-friendly contortions. The newly drawn district is now sensibly compact, taking in northeast Wake County and all of Franklin County. The district is considered competitive, but leaning Democratic.
There are primaries on both the Democratic and Republic sides. Among the Democrats, we strongly recommend Sarah Crawford. On the Republican side, we recommend Jesse “Scott” McKaig.
Crawford, 38, of Raleigh, is national director of Single Stop, a nonprofit that connects people with government services and nonprofit programs. This is Crawford’s second run for the seat. She lost in 2014 after challenging then-incumbent Republican Chad Barefoot.
It’s a testament to how negligent the legislature’s Republican majority has been that Crawford says her return to the campaign trail finds the concerns among voters unchanged. “Largely the issues are the same as what people were talking about in 2014: school funding and Medicaid expansion,” she said. “Unfortunately, the General Assembly hasn’t made any progress on those issues that really matter to people.”
Crawford grew up in Eastern Wake County and is a graduate of N.C. State University. She is the daughter of a public school teacher and knows how government services can help people. If the voters of Dist. 18 don’t want to still be talking about the same issues in six more years, they should send Crawford to the state Senate.
Crawford is competing in the Democratic primary with Angela Bridgman, a former Wake County Democratic Party precinct chair. Bridgman, is one of two transgender candidates seeking election to the General Assembly. The other is Democrat Gray Ellis, an attorney who is running in state Senate Dist. 20.
Bridgman, 48, who runs a medical billing service in Wendell, supports extending broadband into rural areas, increasing funding for public schools in low-income areas, expanding Medicaid and increasing public transportation. She said she and Crawford have similar priorities, but she has more passion to change things in the legislature because of the since-repealed HB2 that discriminated against transgender people.
“I know as a transgender woman what it feels like when your state government declares war on you,” Bridgman said. “I’m not afraid to stand toe-to-toe against injustice.”
GOP primary
In the Dist. 18 Republican primary, McKaig, an attorney who lives near Wake Forest, supports gun rights and opposes Medicaid expansion, but he breaks from traditional conservative positions on other issues. Now general counsel and chief financial officer for Lincoln Network, Inc., McKaig, 36, said he got a view of injustices within the criminal justice system when he did court-appointed criminal defense work. He favors eliminating cash bail and supports decriminalizing marijuana. “I’m a real conservative, but there are some other things people might accuse me of being a moderate on,” he said.
No one will be accusing McKaig’s primary opponent of being a moderate. Larry Norman, 67, of Louisburg, who describes himself as “a country lawyer, Baptist and a conservative Republican.” A former executive committee member of the Franklin County GOP, Norman said he entered the race because there was no one running from Franklin County, even though Dist. 18 covers the entire county.
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 8:37 PM.