By: Marwan Arafa

Primary elections are preliminary elections to select candidates for general elections for the presidency, governorship, U.S. House and Senate, as well as numerous other positions. Early voting in North Carolina began on Thursday, April 28, 2022 and ended on May 14, 2022, with Election Day on May 17. Some races were covered quite often in the news over the past month, and here are the results of some of the races of this year’s primaries.

Cary Town Council At-Large District: As no candidate met the 50% threshold required to win, a runoff election will take place. Candidate Carissa Johnson was in the lead with nearly 40% of the votes, with Ken George coming in second with 38.63% of votes and Ed Yerha (Incumbent) with 21.41% of votes.

District A: Jennifer Robinson won with 75% of the vote.

District C: As no candidate met the 50% threshold required to win, a runoff election will take place. Renee Miller is in the lead with 28.54% of votes, runner up Jack Smith has 28.04%  and Amanda Murphy has 23.41% of votes. Mary Insprucker and George McDowell received a significantly lesser amount of votes.

Congressional races in North Carolina were in the limelight this time around, with much of the attention being targeted towards the Senate primaries. Former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley won the Democratic primary with 81.1% of the vote. Ted Budd won the Republican nomination for the open Senate seat with 58.6% of the vote, winning against former NC governor Pat McCrory who received 24.6% of votes.

Madison Cawthorn, formerly seen as a rising star in the Republican party who has been riddled with controversy and contempt by fellow GOP congressmen, has lost his primary in the 11th district in NC. 

Cawthorn is the youngest member of Congress at 26 years old and has been flooded in controversy lately. Not too long back, Cawthorn called Ukrainian president Zelensky a “thug” and was caught driving with a revoked license twice. He was also detained for bringing a gun through an airport, as well as sexual misconduct claims from his college years. Fellow Republican lawmakers mocked Cawthorn over obscene claims he made about GOP lawmakers, which were quickly taken as unfriendly, and with that as well as his other controversies, the party pulled their support from him. 

After 30 years serving as representative, Democrat David Price will retire from Congress, and a few notable Democratic  candidates ran for the seat. The American Idol runner up in 2003, Clay Aiken, ran for the open seat in another bid for Congress and came in third place following Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam and State Senator Valerie Foushee who won the Democratic primary for the district. Nida Allam, the Bernie and AOC endorsed candidate, won the majority of votes in Durham county which represents the majority of votes in NC-4, but wasn’t enough to defeat the Foushee, who is especially popular in the other areas of the Congressional district. Foushee has come under scrutiny for taking in money from AIPAC, a Political Action Committee that funded many Republicans lawmakers who attempted to block Biden’s presidential victory. Another PAC, founded by a Crypto billionaire, has spent over $830,000 pushing for the candidate, and as a result, the Democratic Progressive Caucus of NC withdrew its blessings from Foushee after the news was revealed. Nearly $3 million was poured into the race by outside groups to combat mainly Allam, who raised nearly a million dollars in almost six months. Allam got started in politics after her friends were killed in a hate crime in the 2015 Chapel Hill shooting. 

The nominees will face off in the general election later this year, where Democrats are expected to lose seats in Congress due to President Biden’s low approval rating and that being a common trend for recent past election cycles.