WASHINGTON — An influential conservative organization that has been spending millions of dollars on ads telling Republicans who former President Donald Trump is backing in the North Carolina Senate race says its strategy is paying off.
Club for Growth has been working to siphon off support from leading Republican candidate Pat McCrory and redirect it to Trump-endorsed GOP Rep. Ted Budd.
Trump’s endorsement in the open U.S. Senate seat was not as potent as it could be, Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in an interview, until the organization’s political arm started running ads in recent months touting his support for Budd.
“A lot of the Republican primary voters were still not aware that the president had endorsed him, and it matters to them,” McIntosh said. “The polls show that they care who he’s endorsed.”
If the economic-focused organization succeeds at leveraging the former president’s support into a victory for Budd in the North Carolina Republican primary, it says it could apply the strategy to Senate contests across the country in 2022.
McIntosh said the organization is already planning to use a similar tactic in the Alabama Senate race, where Club for Growth and Trump are both backing Rep. Mo Brooks in the Republican primary.
What polling says
Club for Growth says it has private polling showing Republican voters are more likely to support candidates because Trump has endorsed them.
While the organization did not share any of that polling with McClatchy, McIntosh said it’s a standard question the group asks, and that typically, 20 to 25% of Republican voters indicate that they favor candidates that have Trump’s endorsement.
In a poll taken in mid-October by Public Opinion Strategies for McCrory’s campaign, 32% of likely Republican primary voters did say they would be more likely to support Budd knowing that he had Trump’s endorsement compared to the 14% who said it would make them less likely to choose him.
But more than half of those voters, 52%, said Trump’s endorsement made no difference.
A survey that WPA Intelligence conducted for Club for Growth in early November put Budd three percentage points behind McCrory, a former North Carolina governor, in the Republican primary to fill the Senate seat that Sen. Richard Burr is vacating.
McCrory had 36% support from Republican voters in the survey to Budd’s 33% with 18% of the electorate undecided. Another 13% said they were backing former GOP Rep. Mark Walker.
Budd’s numbers have climbed in surveys as voters become more familiar with him.
The mid-October poll commissioned by McCrory’s campaign showed the candidate with 40% support to Budd’s 25%.
Budd began the race with 9% support in April, in a McCrory campaign survey, and saw his support jump to 19% in June after Trump issued a surprise endorsement.
Club for Growth has been running its advertisements since early September. It has spent $4.5 million on ads that are running through the end of this year, and McIntosh says the organization will likely spend more than $10 million total on the primary contest.
Republicans are scheduled to cast their ballots on March 8.
The Trump effect
Budd’s campaign says it saw the Trump effect immediately. Donors who had refused to answer Budd’s calls previously did so. Some called proactively.
“President Trump’s endorsement has been very helpful to our campaign of Ted Budd for Senate here in North Carolina,” said Budd’s spokesman Jonathan Felts.
Budd is the owner of a gun store and has served in Congress since 2017. Walker, a three-term former congressman and music minister who did not run for reelection last year to focus on the Senate race also courted Trump.
“Having that support I think goes a long way in saying that you’re a candidate who performs well and represents conservative values,” said Jack Minor, spokesman for Walker.
Minor argued that Trump’s endorsement felt rushed and did not give other candidates enough time to prove that they were in line with the former president’s agenda. He said that once primary debates begin, Walker could make a comeback.
Budd has the backing of Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman who was influential in securing the Budd endorsement.
Name recognition
McCrory’s campaign noted that even with the support that Budd is receiving from Trump and his allies, the former North Carolina governor is ahead in polling.
“This is a battleground state and we have to have candidates who can stand on their own two feet and not rely on endorsements to establish credibility. Candidates need to be able to win on their own record and their own identity,” said Jordan Shaw, a McCrory adviser.
McCrory has the highest name recognition of the candidates and remains popular among conservatives. The Republican made a name for himself as Charlotte’s mayor and the state’s governor before becoming a radio show host.
Chris Cooper, political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University, said the endorsement was the spark that lit Budd’s campaign, leading to national TV coverage, name recognition and larger fundraising. He said it also distinguished Budd and Walker from one another.
“Trump is still the de facto leader of the Republican Party in the state of North Carolina and in the rest of the country,” Cooper said.
Endorsement
McCrory twice lost gubernatorial elections, which Trump said was a factor in who he chose to support.
“You can’t pick people who have already lost two races and do not stand for our values, so I’m going with Congressman Ted Budd — complete and total endorsement,” Trump said as he endorsed Budd in June during the North Carolina GOP’s state convention in Greenville.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist from North Carolina, said the timing of Trump’s announcement — almost nine months before the 2022 GOP primary is scheduled to take place — was a factor in voters’ lack of awareness about the endorsement.
“It happened at a time when no one was paying attention to a Senate race,” he said. “This was really early in advance to do an endorsement.”
McIntosh said that Budd received an initial boost from Trump’s endorsement. But he said bans that social media platforms have enforced against Trump have made it harder for the former president to get his message out.
“When he was in the White House as president, he was in the news every day, and his biggest reach was through the Twitter account, now both of those are not available,” he said.
McIntosh predicted that when Trump reminds voters of the endorsement closer to the primary, it will have an effect that is similar to when he was behind the bully pulpit.
Trump no longer has access to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The companies suspended his accounts, saying his posts encouraged violence around the time of the Jan. 6 insurrection, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Yet, he maintains a significant hold on GOP base voters and the party apparatus.
Intra-party fights
Justin Barasky, a former senior advisor to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that competition for Trump’s endorsement is “creating a toxic environment” for GOP candidates and intensifying Republican Senate primaries earlier to the benefit of the opposing party.
“It is forcing them to almost do nothing other than grovel for the approval of Donald Trump,” Barasky, a Democratic strategist, said. “And even in states that voted for Trump, and frankly a Republican primary electorate base that loves Trump, they’re not only supporting candidates because Trump tells them to.”
In North Carolina’s last Senate race in 2020, Sen. Thom Tillis won against Democrat Cal Cunningham by 1.8 percentage points. Cook Political Report rates the 2022 Senate race in North Carolina a toss-up.
McIntosh said he did not think the intra-party competition would make it easier for Democrats to win the general election.
“I think this is a sort of in-the-family fight of which person should represent the Republican Party, and then you’ll see whoever gets it, almost all the Republicans will come back home, and they’ll be able to win the general election.”
Trump’s reputation
Those outside of Trump’s orbit say an endorsement from the former president could be harmful.
Cooper said that Trump is erratic, anti-establishment and has questionable judgment both rhetorically and behaviorally. His endorsement also comes with the baggage of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.
“It’s not all a gift, but I think every Republican candidate wanted it rather than to not have that endorsement,” Cooper said.
Trump twice won North Carolina, including last year, when he lost the White House to President Joe Biden, but carried the state. Both races were close. In 2016, he won by 3.6 percentage points. His 2020 margin of victory was even tighter, 1.3 percentage points.
“I feel pretty good about Trump’s record in North Carolina,” Budd’s spokesman, Felts, said. “And the people who are probably most critical about Trump, my guess is, never voted Republican anyway.”
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