On paper, you might think North Carolina’s 2022 Senate race is shaping up a lot like 2020 on the Democratic side. One of the candidates, former state senator Erica Smith, ran last time around, losing the primary to Cal Cunningham, who went on to lose the general election last year. Her opponent Jeff Jackson shares a similar biography with Cunningham, being a white male state senator with a military background.
However, both candidates have made a point to distance themselves from Cunningham’s attack ad campaign strategy and embrace Stacey Abrams’ successful Georgia playbook, which is widely credited with flipping the state for the Democrats in 2020. They also highlight the need to focus on a positive message that resonates with voters’ key issues. In an era where partisan negativity has led to increased polarization and even outright hostility, honing in on impactful policy proposals may assist these candidates with drawing in voters, particularly young ones who face bleak economic prospects and hold little partisan allegiance.
Abrams, along with countless other local organizers throughout Georgia, pushed intense voter registration and outreach efforts to expand the electorate, an effort which both Smith and Jackson have championed. Whereas Smith is pushing to register and turn out minority voters, particularly Black women who mobilized in large numbers in Georgia, Jackson aims to campaign in all 100 counties and recruit voters who are normally overlooked in favor of running up the margins in Democratic-leaning urban areas like Raleigh and Charlotte.
Both strategies will be immensely valuable if executed over the course of two years. In 2020, Joe Biden outperformed Abrams’ 2018 governor’s race margin by 66,000 votes, while in the Senate special election runoff, Raphael Warnock surpassed her by almost 150,000 votes. Seeing as Cunningham lost his race by 95,000 votes, a concerted effort by these two campaigns to activate more voters could deliver this seat into the Democrats’ column.
One potential obstacle for Democrats could be the intervention of the national party, which backed Cunningham and assisted him in drastically outraising Smith last time. If the party once again biases the race in favor of a moderate, “electable” candidate rather than letting voters decide, it could undermine the efforts of both candidates to appeal to younger progressives.
Cunningham suffered from the dual circumstances of an elected incumbent opponent and a scandal of his own creation. He underperformed both Gov. Roy Cooper and Biden by a considerable amount. However, Democrats performed relatively poorly on the whole for statewide races. Cooper was one of the few officials to win his election. If the party wants to have a chance to flip the state legislature or win more positions on the North Carolina Council of State, it will need a wider base of support. Politics has a profound impact on our lives, and an effective campaign should put that impact in accessible terms that draw voters in. Smith and Jackson have their work cut out for them in the coming years.
