NC Supreme Court candidate largely absent from campaign trail

We’re less than a month away from the midterm elections. While the most prominent race in North Carolina is for U.S. Senate, there’s also an important race for state Supreme Court. Incumbent Democrat Anita Earls faces a challenge from former Republican state Rep. Sarah Stevens. You’re probably not familiar with her. She hasn’t run any TV ads, has largely avoided social media, and has raised little money. Reporter Bryan Anderson wrote about Stevens’ strategy, or seeming lack of it, for The Assembly. He joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.

Marshall Terry: Stevens has been the target of attack ads that listeners might have seen. But who is she?

Bryan Anderson: She's a former state lawmaker, representative of Surry County on the House side. She's also a longtime attorney as well. So that's really her background. She's ascended up the GOP leadership over time to the point where now she has run for state Supreme Court.

Terry: Why the hands-off approach? It seems like a race for North Carolina Supreme Court is a big deal.

Anderson: Yeah, I mean, it's certainly confused even Republicans that I have spoken to on the strategy and the approach. When you're running in a legislative seat that is very safe, it's very different than running a contentious statewide campaign. So there's some learning curve as to how much you get out there, how often you get out there, and even what you can say. Because the standards for judicial candidates and what they can and can't say publicly is a little bit different than most any other candidate, as far as what they can comment on, what they can't comment on, as far as pending cases that could come before the state Supreme Court. They tend to steer clear of it. But as for campaigning, we've seen her doing some fundraisers here and there, but not really many public events, and there's not really a great answer as to why.

Terry: That was my next question. What has she been doing on the campaign trail? Is that it? Just some fundraisers here and there?

Anderson: Yeah, pretty much just some fundraisers here and there. There's also been a couple of forums. She had an interview with PBS North Carolina, and there's also another forum that was hosted by the Federalist Society that happened last week. But those were private or ticketed events, not open to the public to attend.

Terry: How does Stevens compare to Anita Earls in terms of money raised?

Anderon: Right now, Earls has raised 13 times more than Stevens. That's just as far as cash available, I should say. It is a substantial fundraising advantage for Anita Earls, the Democrat, over Stephens. At this point in the election cycle back in 2024 for state Supreme Court, the script was almost flipped, where you had Jefferson Griffin, the Republican, pretty much doubling the amount of cash on hand as Democrat Allison Riggs. So it is a very wide deficit on the money side between the Democrat and the Republican in this race, and the scale of it is pretty unusual.

Terry: What’s at stake here? Could this race shift the balance of power on the court?

Anderson: Really, what's at stake here is an eight-year term on the bench. What that means short-term is if you are the Republicans, you get a 6-1 majority if you win. If you're the Democrats, you keep a 5-2 minority if you win this. Really, they're fighting for the status quo right now to not lose ground if you're Democrats.

But what's really at stake is in the long run, there's redistricting every 10 years, and whoever wins this seat is going to have a vote and a voice at the table come 2030 redistricting. I know we tend to focus election cycle to election cycle, and it's hard to kind of think of things like five, six years down the line, but this is an eight-year seat on the bench and some very important policy things coming down the pipe in the coming years.