WFAE won a national Edward R. Murrow Award this week for the work of reporters Steve Harrison and Lisa Worf. Their three-part series, "Falling Short: Why Democrats keep losing most statewide races,” won in the News Series category for large market stations across the country.
The series focused on why Republicans continue to prevail in nearly all statewide elections, despite projections that North Carolina was turning blue after Barack Obama won the state’s presidential election and Democrat Kay Hagan won a U.S. Senate seat in 2008.
But by 2022, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley’s loss to Republican Ted Budd was the fifth consecutive defeat for North Carolina Democrats in a U.S. Senate race. Republicans have also won the last three presidential races in the state.
“In 2008, Barack Obama won North Carolina. And if you had told people then that Georgia would vote Democratic in 2020 and North Carolina would have been red, many would have never believed it. So for this series, we tried to figure out why North Carolina Democrats are stuck in place,” Harrison said. “I was proud of the series because it helped me understand what’s going on here, and why the GOP keeps winning. I thought we moved past the conventional wisdom and told our audience something new.”
The series followed U.S. 74, a highway that runs through Charlotte — the state’s largest city and a Democratic stronghold — solidly Republican exurbs and fast-changing rural areas. The first story was set in Brunswick County. There, explosive growth fueled by Republican retirees in the coastal county has helped offset Democratic gains in Charlotte and Raleigh.
Budd, for example, won all of the state’s 10 fastest-growing counties. In addition to Brunswick, that includes the coastal counties of Pender, Camden, Currituck and Dare.
The second story was from Anson County, a Democratic majority-minority county that in November went Republican in a federal race for the first time since Richard Nixon in 1972. Budd won Anson with 52% of the vote. Beasley received about 1,200 fewer votes than Democratic congressional candidate Dan McCready did in the previous mid-term election.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to do work that matters –for people’s willingness to talk frankly, for the time to put things in context, and for colleagues and editors who make stories better,” Worf said.
The series concluded in Charlotte. While Beasley won the city, low turnout in Democratic precincts contributed to Budd’s statewide victory. Harrison focused on a precinct in University City, surrounding UNC Charlotte, where turnout dropped nearly 40% from the 2018 midterm.
The Edward R. Murrow Awards are sponsored by the Radio Television Digital News Association. WFAE’s award will be formally presented Oct. 9 at a gala in New York City.