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Uniquely Competitive North Carolina Emerges as Key 2024 Battleground_我的网站
A | Kenny 编译 某种意义上，交通部长Simeon Brown兑现了任期内不涨燃油税的承诺。
RALEIGH, N.C. – The 2024 election promises to feature several major battlegrounds, but for sheer breadth of competitive contests, North Carolina next year will be hard to beat.
It starts with the presidential race. Recent presidential contests in North Carolina have been close: In 2020, Donald Trump won North Carolina by about 74,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. Experts expect a competitive race again in 2024.
In addition, a newly empowered GOP majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court is poised to redraw the congressional map to benefit Republicans, producing the possibility of competitive races.
Meanwhile, the parties will fiercely contest both chambers of the legislature, which the GOP currently controls by narrow supermajorities, thanks to a Democrat-to-Republican party-switcher in the state House earlier this year. That party switch, by state Rep. Tricia Cotham, now enables Republicans to enact a strongly conservative agenda over the vetoes of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper if they wish.
Cooper, for his part, is term-limited, teeing up a knock-down, drag-out contest to succeed him, likely between Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein and Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
And that isn’t it for falling dominoes: The decisions by Stein and Robinson to seek the governorship leave their old offices of attorney general and lieutenant governor up for grabs in 2024, joining the GOP-held offices of state treasurer and labor commissioner as open-seat contests. The Democratic-held offices of secretary of state and auditor and the Republican-held offices of schools superintendent, insurance commissioner and agriculture commissioner will also be contested in 2024, with varying degrees of competitiveness.
In other words, in 2024, North Carolina will be one of the centers of the political universe – important in part because it’s a uniquely competitive state.
“There’s no telling who will win in 2024, but I’d bet half-court tickets to the UNC-Duke game that it will be close and North Carolina will retain its title as the definition of ‘purple,’” says Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political scientist (and no relation to the governor).
In recent years, North Carolina has mostly hosted close statewide races. During the 2020 and 2022 elections, North Carolina held 16 federal and state races for statewide office – and no candidate in any of them won more than 54% of the vote.
In addition, unlike most states in this highly polarized age, North Carolina has elected a thorough mix of Democrats and Republicans to statewide executive offices, which suggests that voters in the state – or at least a crucial subset of them – are willing to split their tickets.
The Republicans have done best in Senate and presidential contests. In those races, the GOP has kept a consistent – if modest – edge. It’s been a decade and a half since a Democrat has won one of those races. The last to win were Kay Hagan for Senate and Barack Obama for president, both of them way back in 2008.
“North Carolina has proved to be a purple state, but not necessarily a swing state,” says Cooper, the political scientist. “The statewide outcomes have been among the closest in the country, but Republicans have found themselves just on the winning side of the razor’s edge for presidential and Senate elections.”
The most intriguing contrast one can draw for North Carolina is with one of its neighbors to the south. Could North Carolina follow Georgia’s path in voting blue for Senate and presidential elections?
For the better part of two decades, Georgia, like North Carolina, had voted consistently Republican in key federal races – until 2020. That year, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won uphill, and narrow, victories for Senate seats, while Biden was winning the state in the presidential race. In 2022, Warnock won another close election to a full six-year term.
In an era when urban areas have grown bluer by the year, Georgia has seen its major metro area – Atlanta – steadily move toward the Democrats. In 2000, metro Atlanta backed Republican George W. Bush by 4 points. By 2020, the Atlanta metro area backed Biden by 28 points, a whopping 32-point shift.
North Carolina’s biggest metro areas saw a similar pattern.
North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham metro area backed Gore in 2000 by less than a point. Two decades later, Biden won it by 26 points. The state’s most populous county, Wake County (which includes Raleigh and Cary), favored Bush in 2000 by about a point, but backed Biden by 27.
Similar patterns held in the North Carolina portion of the Charlotte metro area. In 2000, Bush won the Charlotte metro area by 18 points. But by 2020, Biden won the region by 4 points – a 22-point shift. The state’s second largest county, Mecklenburg County (which includes Charlotte), voted for Bush by almost 3 points in 2000 but Biden by a massive 36 points.
Such shifts helped the Democrats narrow the statewide gap substantially in North Carolina. In 2000, Bush defeated Gore statewide by 13 points, whereas Trump defeated Biden by about 1 point.
But these shifts weren’t enough to tip the state to the Democrats in the presidential race. A big reason why: Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte don’t have as large a footprint in North Carolina as metro Atlanta does in Georgia.
In 2020, Atlanta’s metro counties accounted for just shy of a majority of votes cast in Georgia – 49%, up from 46% in 2000. So even as outlying Georgia was growing redder – backing Bush by 19 and Trump by 26 – Democrats were able to turn a 12-point statewide loss by Al Gore in 2000 into a narrow victory for Biden in 2020.
By contrast, the Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte metro areas account for a minority of the state’s voters, growing from 36% of the votes cast in 2000 to 42% in 2020.
In other words, in North Carolina, the Democratic gains in the two big metro areas were nearly canceled out by the large and growing GOP margins elsewhere.
“North Carolina has the second most rural voters in the country after Texas, so running up the score in Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte won't get you victory the way Atlanta does in Georgia,” says Cooper, the political scientist. “There’s been a massive Republican gain in rural areas”
Over the next quarter-century, Wake and Mecklenburg counties are projected to grow dramatically faster in population than most other North Carolina counties, according to calculations by the state’s Board of Science, Technology & Innovation. Over the long term, this could make the state bluer.
But for now, North Carolina’s political balance of power belongs in the hands of “countrypolitan" counties, a term coined by Mac McCorkle, a longtime North Carolina consultant who now teaches at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, and Rachel Salzberg.
These 28 counties sit within the economic and commuting orbit of North Carolina’s metro areas, but they’re located on the outlying edge, and they lack the racial diversity, college attainment levels and higher incomes that increasingly align with voting Democratic.
By McCorkle’s and Salzberg’s calculations, “countrypolitan” counties backed Trump in 2020 by a gaping 63%-36% margin, and collectively they provided Trump with about 50% more raw votes than North Carolina’s 50 most rural counties did.
That’s a major reason why Republicans have remained modestly ahead in North Carolina, at least in high-profile federal races, experts say.
To do well in North Carolina, says Western Carolina’s Cooper, “Democrats don’t have to win the rural vote, but they have to avoid getting pummeled.”
This is the goal of Anderson Clayton, the newly installed head of the state Democratic Party. At 25, Clayton, an Appalachian State University graduate, is the youngest state Democratic chairman in the nation.
“One of the things that I think that I learned from being on national campaigns is that a lot of times the national party is not looking at rural places like they should be,” Anderson told an audience in Union County, according to The Washington Post. “They’re looking at it as a place of a problem. And for me, I got really frustrated with that. It was part of the thing that called me home.”
This advice doesn’t just hold for presidential and Senate races, political observers say. It will also help determine whether Democrats can stay competitive in North Carolina’s state-level offices or whether Republicans start running away with them.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, North Carolina has elected only three Republican governors – one for a term in the 1970s, one for two terms in the 1980s and 1990s, and one for a term in the 2010s.
Historically, the successful Democratic model for winning North Carolina gubernatorial races has been to nominate a candidate who can win in metro areas but who hails from less populated regions of the state and connects with voters there. A good example is the current governor, who helped his family farm tobacco while growing up.
But the pool of potential Democratic candidates from more rural areas “has dried up,” says Rob Schofield, the editor of the online publication NC Newsline. Lining up Democratic candidates to run everywhere, as Clayton seeks to do, will be challenging.
“That counts on people running even if they know they will lose and be sacrificed, which is a hard sell,” says Ferrel Guillory, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of North Carolina.
In any case, the likely 2024 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Stein, is set to break his party’s historic mold. Stein, a former legislator who has won two terms as attorney general, grew up in Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina, and earned his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and a law degree and a master’s of public affairs from Harvard.
Meanwhile, Stein’s potential Republican opponent also represents departure from past Republican gubernatorial candidates, who have tended to be economic conservatives from metro areas: Robinson is an outspoken social conservative who has flirted with conspiracy theories, ranging from the moon landing to crisis actors in school shootings.
Robinson doesn’t have a clear path to the nomination. In the primary, he faces state Treasurer Dale Folwell, former Congressman Mark Walker, former legislator Andy Wells and retired health executive Jesse Thomas. But he’s considered the front-runner, due to a strong core of support in a state where, by law, 30% plus one is enough to win a primary.
If the race comes down to Stein and Robinson, as conventional wisdom suggests, “it will be an epic and titanic battle that will be bitterly divided and deeply polarizing,” says Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College. “Probably the most expensive gubernatorial race in the nation for next year, and it may break state records.”
One unknown for now is how the Republican supermajority flexes its expanded policy muscle.
After years of opposition, the GOP legislature in March passed legislation to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and Cooper quickly signed it. But after Cotham’s party switch produced a supermajority, Republicans sidestepped Cooper’s veto and passed a 12-week abortion ban, which is being challenged in court.
Passage of the abortion ban could energize Democrats, as it has in other purple and even red states. This could be exacerbated if the GOP passes other laws popular with the party’s socially conservative base but unpopular among moderates. Robinson’s candidacy, too, risks scaring off Republican moderates.
“When the Republicans moved to find some way to accept Medicaid expansion, to me that reflected that, wow, these guys may be understanding their rough edges,” McCorkle says in an interview. “Then the abortion law happens and then Robinson happens. That could explode things.”
John Hood, president of the John William Pope Foundation, a grant-making foundation, says he believes Republicans in the legislature are “realistic.”
“They recognize that either Stein will be governor or Robinson will be governor, and they don’t trust either,” Hood says.
Ultimately, the noise from the presidential race, especially if Trump is the GOP nominee, could drown out everything else down-ballot.
“The national networks and media may be so consumed by the presidential election that state issues may not affect the public’s mind,” Guillory says.
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根据3月4日内阁发布的《政府陆路交通政策声明草案》，本届政府将废除工党政府逐步将燃油税提高12纽分/升的决议；但到2027年1月（下届国会开始），燃油税将一次性提高12纽分/升。
B | Advertise with us 燃油税的上涨并不止于此：到2028年燃油税还将上涨6纽分/升，之后每年上涨4纽分/升。这意味着下届政府任期结束时（2029年），燃油税将上涨22纽分/升。 与此同时，车辆登记费（rego，即路税）将增加50纽币（未来两年里每年涨25纽币）。交通罚款也将全面提价。 《政府陆路交通政策声明草案》本质上是未来六年的交通预算案，规定了国家党政府希望从道路使用者那里筹措到多少燃油税和路税用于道路升级和改造。
C | 该草案将首先征求意见，然后在7月1日生效。它可能在三年后续签一次（如国家党继续执政）。 草案的两个核心内容是进行道路维护（设立坑洼修复基金）和重启国家重要道路 (RoNS) 计划。根据该计划，国家党政府将在未来交付15条新国道。
D | Brown表示，政府将创建两个坑洼道路基金，一个将花费最多2.3亿纽币，用于维修政府拥有的高速公路；另一个将花费最多2.5亿纽币，用于维修地方议会拥有的地方道路。他说希望资金能够“每年更新2%的高速公路网络”。 关于新路，草案没有给出需要多少资金。根据英文《先驱报》获得的信息，新路成本可能是国家党大选估值的两倍，即存在240亿纽币的资金缺口。 与工党方案相比，国家党方案进行了大幅削减。工党政府曾计划未来三年内在公共交通基础设施上投入高达32亿纽币，相比之下国家党的草案削减了近10亿纽币。 今天下午，总理Christopher Luxon在内阁后新闻发布会上重申了本届任期内不会提高燃油税的承诺。
E | 但他也表示一旦通胀率低于3%，第二个任期就会将燃油税提高12%。 总理和Brown都否认国家党方案存在240亿纽币资金缺口的说法。Brown说那些具有全国意义的道路，其成本往往存在多个估值。 总理暗示将在本周尽快通过该草案。 相关阅读： 为什么汽车在碰撞时不会真的爆炸，就像大片里那样？ 车里必备的十样物品，你都有吗？ 被洪水损坏的汽车： 买家要小心这些陷阱 心理学专家分析驾驶坏习惯： 为什么人们会尾随跟车？ 围观！新西兰十大最贵的豪车大盘点 新西兰最便宜的新车价格不到1.8万纽币！ 新西兰人最喜欢的汽车品牌竟然是它！ 购车新政全面实施，上月新车销量史上最强劲，最便宜的车是…… 体验新西兰的公路之旅，这5条路线最令人震撼 为什么买车要等好几个月？因为这一关键部件严重缺货… 从“日常交通工具”到“理想的SUV”，这款车二手也抢到爆！ 2020年销量前十的二手车中，哪一款是新西兰人的最爱？ 二手车行家告诉你：买铃木Swift要注意些啥？ 又要性能好，又要实用，这样的新车有吗？ 新西兰情侣3年环游地球！驾车35万公里，跨越7大洲和90个国家 大众汽车3月销量创纪录，专家最中意这些车型 省油、环保……混合动力车越来越受新西兰人喜爱 大自然的季节更替，也可能严重损坏你的汽车 SUV几乎占据新车销售半壁江山，哪几款最经济省油？ 花4万纽币，可以买到哪几款适合家庭的二手车？ 在新西兰学车，需要参加专业的教练培训课程吗？ 新西兰市场上有哪些插电式混合动力汽车？能半价买到二手车吗？ 在新西兰修车，如何才能获得公平的报价呢？ 注：本文为编译/原创，欢迎转发分享；但严禁复制等未经授权的非法使用。违反上述声明者，本网将追究其相关法律责任。使用授权请联系[email protected]。 chineseherald.co.nz All Rights Reserved 版权所有 (责编：鸮鹦鹉) 相关内容 疫情通报：过去一周新西兰新增5575例 新西兰警方提醒：警惕针对华人的租房骗局！ “三月疯狂”来了，奥克兰最堵路段大曝光！ 气象局发警报：南岛惊现龙卷风，奥克兰小心雷暴 新西兰日常：13岁当劫匪，青少年光天化日打劫西区加油站...... 怀特岛火山喷发22人遇难！这些公司判赔上千万！但尴尬的是… 一波三折！总理表态：退钱！不再申领住宿津贴 气候预警：本周末全国大范围将迎狂风和暴雨，奥克兰也在内！。
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