Primary Election Results: Surprises and No Surprises

By Moe White

North Carolina voters went to the polls May 6—and during the 10-day early voting period that preceded election day—and solidly supported some favorites while dealing resounding upsets to a few incumbents.

In Buncombe County, long-time District Attorney Ron Moore was out-voted by first-time candidate Todd Williams in a stunning upset.

Williams polled more than 12,000 votes, while the 24-year incumbent received only 5,775—a 68%-32% margin. No Republican filed to run, so Williams will become the county’s new D. A. after the general election in November.

Also defeated was first-term incumbent Buncombe County Commissioner David King, a moderate Republican from District 3 (Candler). Newcomer Miranda DeBruhl, with strong Tea Party support, gained 59% of the vote in a campaign in which she accused King of being too liberal.

Two other Buncombe County Commission Districts saw first-term incumbents re-elected, despite primary challenges. By a nearly three-to-one margin (6,003 to 2,221), District 1 Commissioner Brownie Newman defeated challenger Keith Young, who was hoping to become the first African American ever elected to the Commission.

In District 2 Ellen Frost won 3,884-1,681 over former Commissioner Carol Weir Peterson. Peterson lost her seat after the state legislature established district, rather than county-wide, elections two years ago.

At that time, four candidates ran for two seats; Frost won her seat by a scant 18 votes over third-place candidate Christina Merrill, and will face her again in November.

On the state level, neither the Republican nor the Democratic primary winner for a U.S. Senate seat was a surprise. Kay Hagan, the incumbent, dismissed her closest challenger by more than ten to one in Buncombe County, and by equally large margins across the state.

Speaker of the NC House Thom Tillis, running in a field of eight candidates, won the Republican primary with 45% of the vote statewide, avoiding a runoff and putting him in a strong position to challenge Hagan in November.

Tillis’s showing in Buncombe County was weaker than elsewhere, perhaps because of the strong Tea Party turnout for DeBruhl: Tillis won only 39.6% in Buncombe County (3,549 votes of 8,950 cast), while Tea Party activist Mark Harris took 43% (3,854 votes).

Hagan is widely perceived as vulnerable by pundits and Republican activists. Super-PACs affiliated with the Koch Brothers and others have already spent millions against her. Although she has a war chest of approximately $8 million compared to much less in Tillis’s hands, there will be no shortage of money flowing into the state from corporate and billionaire interests hoping to oust her.

Also of interest—and crucial to the hopes of progressives fighting against the legislature’s radical revisions to state law over the past four years—were two seats on the state Supreme Court. Special interest groups poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign to defeat Associate Justice Robin Hudson, and lesser amounts against incumbent Associate Justice Ed Clontz.

If either or both is defeated, conservative activists hope that newly elected Republican justices will uphold laws that have been challenged in court, including draconian new restrictions on voting registration and access to the polls for seniors, students, minorities, and the poor; and changes to state education funding that would strip millions in public funds from public schools and give them to private schools (including for-profit charters).

In the judicial races, which are technically nonpartisan, the two top vote-getters face off in November. Hudson took 53% of the vote in Buncombe County, Eric Levinson earned 23.6%, and Jeannette Doran took 23.3. The other incumbent, Ed Clontz, took 35% in his race, while challenger Matthew Martin took 39.8% and J. Thomas Amburgey 25.1%.