Does Trump’s endorsement still reign supreme in NC? These 3 races have answers.

Donald Trump’s preferred candidates both won and lost in a few key Republican primaries across North Carolina on Tuesday night.

In three crowded primaries, Trump’s favored candidates are so far a mixed bag: Rep. Ted Budd easily won the U.S. Senate primary, and political newcomer Bo Hines eked out a win in a crowded race for U.S. House. But Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost his scramble to stay in office, amid scandals and leaks, and despite Trump urging voters just before the election to give Cawthorn “a second chance.”

The showing in those three primaries illustrates a trend that has been repeating in many states across the country: The twice-impeached former president remains popular among GOP voters, but his endorsement alone doesn’t guarantee victory.

In the Senate race in particular, Trump’s endorsement helped Budd rise from his role as a relatively new and obscure member of Congress from a rural swath of the state to now being just a few months away from potentially becoming a U.S. senator. He beat the much more widely known former Gov. Pat McCrory, who was the mayor of the state’s biggest city and later became just the third Republican governor of North Carolina since Reconstruction.

Budd had such an insurmountable lead over McCrory early on that The Associated Press called the race in his favor just a few minutes after polls closed, even as many votes remained uncounted.

Budd advisor Jonathan Felts told The News & Observer that the campaign thinks Trump’s endorsement, in addition to helping in the GOP primary, will also help in the general election where Budd will face Cheri Beasley, a Democrat who was the first Black woman to serve as N.C. Supreme Court chief justice.

“Trump’s message turned out the Republican base. And Trump’s policies — record-setting economic growth — that turned out the unaffiliated vote,” Felts said. “It turned out mean tweets didn’t bother them. A working economy? They really liked that. So I think we’ll do fine across the state based on those same principles.”

Trump won North Carolina in both 2016 and 2020, although his margin of victory shrank to less than 2% of the vote in 2020.

Madison Cawthorn

Democratic voters in Western North Carolina have been fighting in court to have Cawthorn kept off the ballot due to his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Congress. But even as that challenge remains pending, it seems Republican voters have beaten them to the punch.

Cawthorn conceded to state Sen. Chuck Edwards. Candidates can’t ask for a recount in North Carolina unless the margin is less than 1% of the vote, and Edwards was leading by close to 2%.

“This is simply incredible,” Edwards said in a written statement. “Against all odds, we fought hard to win this election and provide clear conservative leadership for the mountains.”

Trump critics, even within the GOP, immediately reveled in the news.

“Donald Trump endorsed (Cawthorn). (Cawthorn) lost. Ouch,” tweeted Cawthorn’s congressional colleague, fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a moderate who was one of a small number of Republicans to vote to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Cawthorn’s myriad scandals — which include his controversial comments about Washington orgies involving Republican lawmakers, accusations of sexual harassment and falsely claiming to have been accepted into the Naval Academy — were too much for many in the GOP establishment.

The top Republican leaders in the state legislature, Sen. Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, both endorsed Edwards, a state senator from Cawthorn’s home of Henderson County. U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis also took the rare step of endorsing a challenger to a fellow member of Congress from his own party — important not just for the potential votes Tillis’ support might sway but also for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that a PAC aligned with Tillis then began pouring into the race, largely for anti-Cawthorn ads.

But Trump, who also faces dozens of allegations of sexual assault and other scandals, recently posted a message on a conservative social media site he founded, called Truth Social, telling voters “let’s give Madison a second chance!”

It wasn’t enough to save Cawthorn, with Edwards winning in the end.

Bo Hines

But in a third GOP primary Trump was heavily involved in, in the Raleigh suburbs, Hines narrowly avoided a runoff and won with about 32% of the vote.

The 26-year-old had few ties to the district he won Tuesday night, the 13th Congressional District centered on Johnston County and southern Wake county. He didn’t live in the district until after voting had already started, and faced several serious opponents including DeVan Barbour and Kelly Daughtry, who were both well-known in Johnston County, and former U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers. There were nine candidates in the race in all, but Hines was still able to eke out a win on the strength of Trump’s endorsement.

“Between now and the General Election, I fully intend to continue carrying my America First message to as many voters as possible; a message that the status quo is no longer acceptable and it is long past time for Republicans to go on offense,” Hines said Tuesday night in a written statement.

That district is perhaps the only swing district in North Carolina. Almost immediately Hines’ opponent in November, Wiley Nickel, began tying Hines to Trump in a negative light.

”The Republicans are on track tonight to nominate an extremist who wants to placate Donald Trump, take away a woman’s right to choose and repeal the Affordable Care Act,” Nickel said. “We can’t let that happen.”

Trump’s endorsements foreshadow 2024?

Trump, out of office, has maintained a higher profile than other ex-presidents — perhaps in part because many of his supporters don’t believe he actually lost.

Polls show a large majority of Republican voters still believe Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen — even though Trump and his allies have never been able to show any proof, and have since lost dozens of lawsuits on election fraud allegations, and Trump’s own Department of Justice confirmed the election was fair and secure.

Trump’s continued grip on Republican voters has made him a favorite to run again for president in 2024.

In March a poll from Harvard CAPS-Harris found that if the next presidential election were held then, Trump would likely win, The Hill reported.

But the next presidential election is not right now; it’s in two-and-a-half years. There’s still time for Trump’s sway on the GOP to fade, or to grow. With that in mind, many political observers look to his record on GOP primary endorsements as a proxy for his popularity in swing states like North Carolina.

Trump’s pick won the Republican Senate primary in Ohio last week, as JD Vance beat Josh Mandel. And the candidate he endorsed in North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary, Budd, appears headed to a lopsided victory over McCrory.

However, his endorsement doesn’t always guarantee a win.

Charles Herbster, Trump’s pick for governor in Nebraska, who like Trump faces allegations of sexual misconduct from multiple women, lost the recent GOP primary there. And in Alabama, after Rep. Mo Brooks began lagging in the polls earlier this spring in his race for Senate, NPR reported, Trump revoked his endorsement of Brooks possibly “to avoid being associated with a losing campaign.”