North Carolina’s down-ballot races are some of the most interesting on the ballot this election cycle. But they’re also some of the quietest — so far.
The races for attorney general and superintendent of public instruction have more noteworthy candidates than usual this year, but they haven’t really dominated the airwaves or the public conversation. At least not in the same way as the race for, say, governor. Although all three races feature Republican candidates that make this the most extreme statewide ticket in recent memory — if not ever — far less attention has been paid to Republican attorney general candidates Dan Bishop and superintendent candidate Michele Morrow.
There hasn’t been much flame-throwing in the attorney general race, which one might have expected to be a bit more fiery, given that both candidates are avid users of social media. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with normal races and traditional campaigns, and voters don’t benefit when candidates get ugly with one another. But it doesn’t much feel like a race between a TikTok famous congressman and another congressman who is an election denier — just a normal race between a Democrat and Republican.
Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said polls show that voters are seeing it the same way.
“People are differentiating the governor’s race from the rest. The preference patterns at this point are different there,” Cooper said. “But the rest of it, they’re just stand-ins for generic Democrat, generic Republican. There’s just not much difference at all between opinions on, say, Dan Bishop and Michelle Morrow and [GOP nominee for state auditor] Dave Boliek.”
In one of his characteristic TikTok videos last month, Jackson acknowledged that “roughly 70 days out from the election, my opponent and I do not exist to most voters in the state. Most people do not know my name or his.”
Jackson said in the video that running commercials during TV programs like “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” is the best way to reach voters, but it’s also expensive. In the few ads he can afford to run, he has to choose which topics to highlight: his record, his opponent’s record, the issues at the forefront of his race.
In part, that’s because candidates further down the ballot don’t have as much cash to run ads as someone like Josh Stein can. So far, nearly $50 million has been spent on TV ads advocating for Stein, with millions more spent on reservations through Election Day. But candidates in races further down the ballot — even if they have more money than the typical down-ballot candidate — simply can’t afford to run TV ads that early and often. In comparison, both Bishop and Jackson will not run ads for their attorney general campaigns until late September or early October.
But the relative quiet is also because there’s not much oxygen left to give to other races, Cooper said.
“Everything except for president and governor has been very quiet, and I do wonder how much of that is just because the candidates are waiting for a period of lack of news at the top of the ticket before they try to get people’s attention,” Cooper said. “The scarcest resource in American politics isn’t money, it’s attention, right? That’s the one thing that we can’t generate more of.”
Like Robinson, whose history of conspiratorial and vitriolic statements constantly makes headlines, Morrow received her fair share of national media attention when she unexpectedly won her primary earlier this year. But it’s been much quieter since then, and while Morrow and her Democratic opponent Mo Green have been active on social media and the campaign trail, the race hasn’t reached the forefront of public discussion.
Such is the life of a down-ballot candidate, though. For Republicans, that may be a good thing. If voters don’t see a difference between Bishop or Morrow and a generic Republican, they may simply vote their normal party preference down the ballot — even if they decide Trump or Robinson is too extreme to earn their vote. But there’s still time for both races to heat up, and for candidates from both parties to more clearly define themselves in the eyes of voters.
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