Democrats, already steeped in an expensive campaign to win North Carolina, are about to spend big on a lesser-known but highly consequential race in the state.
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State is making its first-ever investment in North Carolina to defend incumbent Secretary of State Elaine Marshall’s seat to the tune of seven figures. Why? Because of 2020, the Democratic campaign arm said.
“The only reason that you saw North Carolina stay out of trouble, so to speak, in 2020 was because it was a Trump state,” DASS Executive Director Travis Brimm said. “They didn’t have a need or a desire to have a fake-elector scandal.”
Marshall, the first woman to be elected statewide in North Carolina, has held the seat since 1996. But Marshall’s margin of victory has dwindled in the past two presidential elections. She had just a 2-point lead against Republican nominee E.C. Sykes in the 2020 race. She’s now facing Chad Brown, the chair of the Gaston County commission and a former small-town mayor.
“[Republicans] aren’t just targeting the role as it stands right now,” Marshall told NOTUS about her GOP challenger. “He is campaigning on election integrity, which has a different meaning to MAGA. He is advocating that if a Republican can get the office, then a willing General Assembly will give all of the election apparatus to him.”
Brown told NOTUS that he’s aware of how much of a priority Democrats are making the race.
“At the end of the day, I mean, it is a very vital role in North Carolina, and I see they see me as a threat to what they’re doing, which is keeping our elections with no integrity,” Brown told NOTUS. “They’re threatened by me wanting to put the board of elections underneath the secretary of state’s office to continue election integrity and what needs to be done in North Carolina.”
Some state governments have taken action to prevent what happened in 2020 from happening again. One bill, signed into law by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in April, makes it illegal to conspire to submit false slates of electors for a candidate who did not win the popular vote in the state.
North Carolina has passed no such bill, and Democrats have no faith that the state’s GOP supermajority would consider it. The state’s General Assembly passed a bill in 2023 that would have moved the independent State Board of Elections’ administrative functions under the authority of the secretary of state. The law also granted the General Assembly appointment power for the board, removing it from the governor. A panel of three superior court judges struck down the law in March.
“What you’re seeing Republicans in the legislature doing is trying to give themselves optionality of how to absorb elections in a critical swing state,” Brimm told NOTUS. “They’re essentially preparing for any outcome to be able to control what happens there.”
DASS has been focused on this particular race in North Carolina since early 2023. Their full-scale effort to reelect Marshall involved the assembly of a team of consultants building field plans, budgets and prepping Marshall for interviews. The new seven-figure investment is going to fund “paid media, polling and opposition research and direct mail” across North Carolina, organizers shared.
Democrats are worried Brown, a Trump loyalist and supporter of gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who has denied the results of the 2020 election, could further sow distrust in elections.
Brown told NOTUS that any comparisons to Trump or Robinson are unfair.
“I think to put someone in a box just because we belong to the same party, or we were friends with them, or some other type of aspect, I think that’s pretty shallow-minded,” Brown said. “And I think at the end of the day, they should look at the candidate. … They want to use everything they can to talk about who you’re aligned with, or who you’re with, but rather than looking at me as an individual.”
Democrats, however, point out that the focus on election integrity has been in bad faith, generating a lot of distrust where there shouldn’t be.
“All of the questioning of elections has been absorbed by both Democrats and Republicans, but mostly Republicans as if it’s true,” Marshall said of the effects of 2020 election denialism. “People fail to pay attention to the fact that over 60 cases went before judges of their choice, and there was not a grain of evidence that was presented, so, therefore, these cases were all dismissed. It is just made-up stuff, but I’m afraid people will continue to attempt to make those same challenges going forward.”
Democrats particularly note the elevation of election security as a centerpiece in Brown’s campaign, which they describe as a common dog whistle for denialism.
“The biggest issue facing North Carolina is election integrity and making sure that every legal vote is counted and not just every vote,” Brown said in an interview with WIDU radio in July. “We have a border crisis going on right now. What’s going to happen when it comes down to whether these people should be allowed to vote?”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.