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The North Carolina GOP is considering changes that would allow the state party to explicitly back candidates during primary elections, under extraordinary circumstances.
Under a new proposal, the party would be allowed to identify an “Opportunistic Candidate or a Dishonorable Candidate … running in a contested Republican primary and withhold recognition, endorsement, and resources from that candidate.”
Any such move would require a two-thirds vote of the party’s executive committee. No candidate could be pulled for the ballot.
The party defines an “opportunistic candidate” as someone who “was not a registered Republican on January 31st of the year prior to the year in which he or she seeks office and who the Executive Committee finds switched parties in order simply to gain an advantage in the general election or to defeat another Republican candidate in a primary election.”
A “dishonorable candidate” is “an individual who the Executive Committee finds has conducted himself or herself in a disreputable manner and whose candidacy would bring dishonor upon the Republican Party.”
The proposed changes were first reported by the Longleaf Politics newsletter.
GOP spokesperson Matt Mercer said the changes were being considered before the 2024 cycle.
But it’s clear that last year will be on the minds of party insiders when the rules are debated at the start of the party convention in Greensboro this summer.
Mark Robinson’s disastrous candidacy may have cost the GOP a chance to win not only the governor’s race, but also the lieutenant governor’s race and a seat on the state Supreme Court, should Jefferson Griffin’s ballot challenges ultimately fail.
The race for Superintendent for Public Instruction was also fumbled away by Michele Morrow, who CNN reported “expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden.”
But if those rules were in place last year, they probably wouldn’t have changed anything.
The trove of negative stories about Morrow came out after she won the primary. As for Robinson, there was plenty of disqualifying material known about him before the primary — and Republicans overwhelmingly voted for him anyway.
Journalist Bryan Anderson reported last week that Morrow is considering primarying Thom Tillis next year. If the new rules are in place, the party could, in theory, consider her a dishonorable candidate.
But would there be enough support to do that for Tillis, who has never been beloved by the base and was actually censored by the state party in 2023?
