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Hal Weatherman looked relaxed, if a bit tired, as he ambled up the steps of High Point University’s Callicutt Auditorium on a chilly January evening. The candidate for lieutenant governor wore blue jeans with a navy blazer. His face was stubbled. He had been on the road for three nights.
In Roxboro, he had given a speech at a rally for Mark Robinson, the current lieutenant governor and likely Republican nominee for governor. Then he went on to Davie, Forsyth, and Surry counties. In Mt. Airy, he posed for a photo in the barber shop made iconic by Andy Griffith. “Every Governor of NC since 1980 has posed for a picture with Russell or Bill in this very chair,” he noted on X.
Weatherman was the first Republican to declare his candidacy for lieutenant governor, in January 2023. Since then, he has raised $412,000, more than double any of his primary opponents, if you exclude personal loans. There are now 10 other Republicans in the race.
His campaign is similar to the 13 he has previously run on behalf of other candidates. He ran former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s campaigns in 2012, 2016, and 2020, and before that, the campaigns of Forest’s mother, Sue Myrick, who served 18 years as one of the most conservative members of Congress. He was Myrick’s longtime chief of staff, then Forest’s, and later worked in lesser roles for firebrand U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn and congressional candidate Bo Hines. Weatherman boasts that, in this campaign alone, he has visited all 100 counties in the state and gone to 35 of them more than five times each.
At High Point University—where the slogan is “God. Family. Country.”—the architecture reflects the conservative values Weatherman champions on the stump. The grand neo-Georgian buildings, decorated with inspirational quotes, bear the names of business magnates. In the wintery darkness, the campus’s abundant white spires were aglow.
Inside the auditorium, Weatherman stopped every few feet to shake someone’s hand. He was feeling confident. He had just put out a press release about a straw poll conducted at the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Liberty Conference the previous weekend that showed he was leading the crowded field, with 31 percent—two points ahead of the next highest, former state Sen. Deanna Ballard.
To be sure, the straw poll’s sample size was small, making predictions unreliable. But it echoed other data he had seen, Weatherman said in an interview. He knows he still has lots of work to do, however, because “most people still have no idea who any of us are.”
Weatherman’s competitors in the auditorium looked far less comfortable gladhanding. Seth Woodall, an attorney from Eden who made a splash by announcing he was loaning his campaign $1 million, sat in a roped-off area, studying his notes. A woman got his attention by calling out “Rockingham,” the county he calls home. According to campaign finance disclosures, almost all of his donors live there too.
Three others joined Weatherman and Woodall on the stage in front of an American flag on a massive, curved screen: Rivera Douthit, who has a background in women’s ministry and critical-care nursing; Marlenis Hernandez Novoa, a former firefighter and paramedic; and Rep. Jeffrey Elmore, a public school art teacher and state House budget writer. Douthit and Hernandez Novoa are mostly self-funded, while Elmore, a six-term legislator, raised $111,000 last year, a good deal of it from General Assembly heavy hitters, including the House speaker.
The students’ first question to the candidates hit on a core aspect of the lieutenant governor’s job: It’s mostly undefined. Other than acting as governor when the elected one can’t, the job has very few responsibilities. And because the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately in North Carolina, there’s no guarantee they will agree on anything. “If elected,” a student asked, “what additional duties would you like to have? How important is it to you to work together with the governor despite the party of the elected?”
“We’re going to have a bold conservative governor elected this fall, a strong conservative governor,” Elmore predicted. “The lieutenant governor does not need to be an out-front position. It needs to be a person behind that governor supporting their efforts at the state legislature. I have that skill set.”
“Most people still have no idea who any of us are.”
Hal Weatherman, Republican primary candidate
Hernandez Novoa said she, too, was hoping for a Republican governor and emphasized “unity.”
Weatherman came at the question from another angle. “Five times the governor has been removed from office, died or otherwise incapacitated, so you have to take seriously when you’re electing a lieutenant governor, ‘Are you electing a governor in waiting?’”
He added that he would incorporate the work of the election watchdog nonprofit he founded into his office.
Woodall stressed his closeness to Lt. Gov. Robinson, the GOP’s presumed king-maker.
“I’ve worked closely with Mark’s campaign strategist,” he said. “We actually share campaign consultants and strategists, so I’m intimately aware of the policy that will be implemented by Mr. Robinson when he takes office in 2025.
“So I’m not going to be a stranger to taking that seat in the event that something happens, God forbid.”
‘An Office In Search of Purpose’
To judge by the number of hopefuls, no elected post in North Carolina is more desirable than lieutenant governor. Fifteen people filed to run this year: 11 Republicans, three Democrats, and one Libertarian. The long list even includes a Mark H. Robinson (not to be confused with the current lieutenant governor, whose middle initial is K).
The field was crowded in the last cycle, too. Six Democrats sought the nomination. On the Republican side, Robinson, a political novice, emerged victorious from a field of nine.
In both years, there was no incumbent to run against, surely explaining some of the interest. But is there more to it?
The enthusiasm for the job definitely cannot be attributed to the inherent power of the office. In Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick dominates the legislative agenda and is often described as that state’s most powerful politician. But it’s nothing like that in North Carolina, at least not anymore. The General Assembly stripped away the office’s most substantial powers in the late 1980s, when a Republican was elected to the role for the first time since Reconstruction, putting the Democrats’ long-held control of state machinery in doubt.
Now, “it’s sort of an office in search of a purpose,” said Chris Cooper, political science professor at Western Carolina University and author of the forthcoming book Anatomy of a Purple State.
Unlike other statewide offices in North Carolina, serving as lieutenant governor requires no specialized knowledge. That was part of the appeal to Forest, who had never held elected office before his 2012 run. He was an architect by trade, but he felt that God was calling him to serve his state. “When I decided to run for lieutenant governor, I didn’t even really know exactly what the lieutenant governor did,” he said.
He attributes the expansive field of hopefuls the past two election cycles to his own work elevating the office’s profile. Forest’s first campaign, with Weatherman by his side, stretched for two years. Then he served for eight, the maximum allowed. “It seemed to be for a lot of other lieutenant governors almost a holding place or a resting place so that they could go on to the next thing,” Forest said. “But for us, we were focused on having a really solid agenda.”
He renovated the lieutenant governor’s mansion and pushed for renewal of the surrounding neighborhood, while assigning staffers to write bills and find legislators willing to introduce them. He said he initiated legislation expanding broadband in schools and introducing a computer science curriculum. He also sued Gov. Roy Cooper over his COVID-19-related orders, making an argument about limiting the governor’s emergency powers that the General Assembly later acted on. (Forest lost the lawsuit.)
“When I decided to run for lieutenant governor, I didn’t even really know exactly what the lieutenant governor did.”
Dan Forest, former lieutenant governor
The state constitution lays out the lieutenant governor’s short list of responsibilities, which includes presiding over the Senate, but voting only to break a tie; serving on the State Board of Education; and “such additional duties as the General Assembly or the Governor may assign to him.”
In recent years, not all that much has been assigned, not even to Forest when he served with a Republican governor and Republican-led General Assembly. Legislators have given the lieutenant governor a seat on a handful of boards and the power to make a few appointments. Last year, lawmakers even debated reducing the office’s influence further, stripping away the lieutenant governor’s seat on the community college governance board before restoring it. Governors have rarely seen fit to share their power.
Some past candidates have even tried to turn the rough edge between the offices of the governor and lieutenant governor to their advantage. Jimmy Green, for example, campaigned successfully in 1980 on a promise not to be the governor’s “yes-man.” Green was virtually certain to serve under a fellow Democrat, but the two offices have been held by different political parties for much of the time since. North Carolina is among 17 states where the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately, rather than using the more common method, a shared ticket.
The current crop of candidates seem to view the independence and slim portfolio of the lieutenant governor’s office as a large part of the draw.
“The job is what you make of it,” said former state Sen. Ben Clark, a Democratic candidate who retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel.
The few formal powers are paired with “unlimited influence,” Weatherman said.
Ballard, often described as a Republican rising star, considers the job “a great platform.” She said she would call on her existing relationships to get her priorities accomplished, but also use the office for “raising issues up.”
Pastor Allen Mashburn, another Republican in the field, likes to say he would be “the people’s lobbyist.”
The candidates’ proposed uses of the lieutenant governor’s bully pulpit range from the familiar to the quixotic. Abortion, parents’ rights legislation, and vocational training are favorite topics. Several promised to oppose casinos, which are a priority for the Senate leader. Hernandez Novoa wants to have the Wake County school superintendent fired. Mashburn would like to see state institutions withdraw from the American Library Association over its “proactive stance in the approval, recommendation, defense, and distribution of inappropriate/pornographic materials in schools” and “Marxist principles.”
The current lieutenant governor has showcased the bully pulpit’s promise, using it to rail against LGBTQ people and political indoctrination in public schools, making national headlines and feeding into a wave of legislation to curtail what teachers can say and do.
Even the Democrats hoping to take his seat acknowledge Robinson has wielded his limited power to great effect.
“He’s certainly elevated his standing in the entire country,” said state Sen. Rachel Hunt, who is seen as the leading Democratic contender. “Everybody knows who he is.”
The Outsiders
Former legislators have often occupied the lieutenant governor’s office. But as Robinson and Forest demonstrated, voters can be persuaded that being an outsider in Raleigh is an asset.
Several current candidates are marking that case. The Libertarian candidate, Dee Watson, is an oncology researcher, in addition to being an advocate for more school choice and school regulation. Her background in statistical programming is a key part of her pitch. “I’ve always worked in places where opinions are formed from fact finding,” her campaign website reads, and facts lead “honest people” to agree on the course of action. “If elected, that’s what I hope to bring to the capital.”
Some of the Republican candidates have held local elected office, including Sam Page, who has been sheriff of Rockingham County since 1998.
Page has garnered attention for painting the interior of his jail “hideous” colors (“If you come to the Rockingham County Jail, you’re not gonna like it.”), advocating for more aggressive border enforcement, and chairing Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign in North Carolina.
“The job is what you make of it.”
Ben Clark, Democratic primary candidate
He made news more recently for the significant number of people who have died in the jail he oversees, including three suicides in one month in 2021. The News & Observer found that state inspectors flagged supervision failures in six of the seven deaths there in 2021 and 2022. At least one other person died in the jail last year, leading to another citation for improper supervision and screening.
Last fall, The News & Observer reported that a mysterious group called the North Carolina Conservative Project was polling a match up between Page and arguably the most powerful politician in the state, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger. The poll showed Page 30 points ahead in a primary for the Senate seat, Axios reported. While Page had challenged the Senate leader on casinos, he ultimately decided not to run against him.
“There’s been lots of speculation and interest in my decision,” Page wrote in a statement, “but in the end I believe I am doing what I’ve said I’d do all along – putting the needs of the citizens first and running to put a spotlight on Public Safety, Fighting Crime, Border Security, and Education Reform – all things I can tackle as the next Lieutenant Governor and use that bully pulpit to focus attention where it is most needed – to protect the people.”
Jim O’Neill, a four-term district attorney from Forsyth County, has a similar message, vowing to be tough on crime and “stand against any attempts to bring casinos to our communities.”
This is O’Neill’s third bid for statewide office. He ran for attorney general twice, in 2016 and 2020, and lost the second race to Josh Stein by only a quarter of a percentage point.
Those previous campaigns, combined with hailing from a populous county, are to O’Neill’s advantage, said Mitch Kokai, senior political analyst with the conservative John Locke Foundation. But O’Neill’s campaign has been quiet, and he only raised $2,500 in the second half of 2023.
Mashburn, a fiery Baptist preacher with no previous government service, is campaigning as a “homeschool dad” and boasts his role in an influence campaign that changed the makeup of school boards across the state.
Mashburn co-founded the podcast Carolina Conservatives, with the slogan “preachers with a punch,” in 2022. The show endorsed 31 school board candidates across the state, and 27 of them won, Mashburn said. The focus was on removing books deemed too sexual or otherwise inappropriate from school libraries.
Mashburn now lives in Montgomery County but grew up in Moore County, which is where he has focused his activism. He takes credit for the ultraconservative majority on the Moore County school board and the recent removal of four books.
At a recent event in Pinehurst, Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, expressed his support, calling Mashburn and Lt. Gov. Robinson “one hell of a team for North Carolina,” Mashburn said.
Mashburn also claims Robinson as a “good friend,” telling a conservative radio host in August that the two met several years ago through a program that recruits pastors for public office. “And the lord knit our hearts together,” he said. He strongly implied that Robinson and his wife gave their blessing for his run, but clarified that Robinson had yet to make a formal endorsement.
Two men’s rhetoric has much in common. In relation to LGBTQ people, both have used the word “filth.” In an op-ed he circulated last summer, Mashburn called Pride Month a “celebration of moral degradation.”
Peter Boykin, another primary candidate, is president of the national organization Gays for Trump. Aligned with many of the other candidates on economy-related questions, he parts ways when it comes to the intermingling of religion and politics: “For so many of these guys, I’m like, why don’t you just stay a preacher?”
He suggests that the mothers outraged by drag queens reading to children start their own reading programs. And on issues related to transgender children playing sports: “We think about weight class and strength class to divide things in the boxing industry and wrestling and things. Why don’t we do that?”
He considers the current flavor of social conservatism “extremism.”
A Well-Known Name
In the Democratic primary, there’s no question who the frontrunner is.
Rachel Hunt benefits from a surname that’s almost mythical in North Carolina politics. Jim Hunt, “the education governor,” is her father.
The one-term state senator, an attorney by trade, raised $843,000 last year, dwarfing the haul of all other candidates in both parties.
In the primary, Hunt faces former state Sen. Ben Clark, who is running on his 10 years in the legislature and more extensive management résumé, and Mark H. Robinson, the owner of a cotton candy business who has, according to one campaign consultant, probably the worst possible name to run in the Democratic primary.
Hunt’s campaign has put abortion rights front and center, and said the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was a major part of her impetus to run.
Hunt thought North Carolina Democrats needed a woman in a high-profile position to talk about the consequences.
“There is not any way that men can understand what this decision really means,” she said. When no other women seemed eager to jump into the lieutenant governor’s race, she decided she would.
At an upscale retirement community in Chatham County last month, Hunt ran through an array of policy positions, many of specific interest to women, her core supporters in past elections. She has represented a relatively conservative part of suburban Charlotte since 2018, first in the House, then the Senate.
She ticked through education, child care, elder care, health care, the environment, the frustrations of representing her constituents when Democrats were in a “superminority.”
“We also know that in the state, we’ve had this huge fight over women’s reproductive health care rights,” she said. “I’ve been on the forefront of that fight, because to me, it is about freedom.
“Women have to have the freedom to control their own bodies. Otherwise, they are not first-class citizens. They’re second-class citizens. And I refuse to be that. And I refuse to let my daughter be that,” she said, her volume rising with each sentence.
The audience of about 40 residents broke into applause.
Afterward, Hunt answered questions about her relationship with Stein, the current attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor (good), and the help expected from the state and national parties (some).
She explained how, as lieutenant governor, she would take an active role in presiding over the Senate and use her power over rules enforcement to her Democratic colleagues’ advantage. “There are so many illegal things going on in that building,” Hunt said, “it’s hard to even talk about.”
The queries ebbed. Then a woman raised her hand. “My only question for you is, will I be voting for you for governor in a few years?”
Hunt blushed. It was lost on no one that the path from lieutenant governor to governor worked for her father.
Getting to 30 Percent
On a gray Wednesday morning in western North Carolina, Elmore, the House representative, stepped out of the cold winter mist and into the Winner’s Circle Restaurant.
Roughly 40 Republican women were waiting for him in a screened-off room past the salad bar.
Some of the people inside were familiar. He was only an hour from his home in North Wilkesboro, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here in Jefferson, the elevation was higher, but the cultural touchstones were similar. Elmore had proudly helped boost his home county’s economy with a General Assembly-funded revamp of a local speedway and regulatory tweaks to aid the distilleries in the “Moonshine Capital of the World.” At the Winner’s Circle, the walls were decorated with racing memorabilia.
Standing between the tables as waitresses served sweet tea, Elmore joked about his relationship with the county’s House representative, Ralph Hise. During budget season, he said, “I end up spending more time with Ralph than I do with my wife.”
He emphasized that he was deep in the details at the legislature, especially on education. To illustrate, Elmore offered a story. A recent law took most charter school oversight authority away from the State Board of Education. (That board “has an agenda,” he said; most members are appointed to eight-year terms by the governor.) The board responded with a new policy that would force approved charter schools to apply for funding. Elmore saw in the move a bid to tie the legislation up in a lawsuit. “I found that out Monday and had a budget revision done by Wednesday,” he said.
That’s what voters could expect from him: He’s a “worker bee,” he said. “You won’t see me dancing on TikTok or pinching my lips,” he promised.
Elmore invited questions. He loves them, maybe due to being a teacher, and they offered a bit of a break from his stump speech. But the queries that came had little to do with the job he seeks. They were aggressive, framed to suggest there was only one right answer.
He was asked about abortion (he supports a six-week ban) and cash bail (he’s in favor). Twice he was asked to explain his position on a constitutional convention (he’s opposed, because at the end you could have something with “no semblance of the United States”).
One man asked how, as lieutenant governor, Elmore would help to enforce the legislature’s directives on education, such as the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board had decided not to fully obey. “If money disappears, people will get in line,” Elmore said. But the man pressed on: “It seemed like the legislature was ill-equipped to come up with what the penalty would be when they came out with that.”
Instead of deflecting, Elmore was candid. “I think a lot of that is that it’s an election year,” he said. It’s going to be hard to impose financial penalties “because Republican members will have systems do the same thing” and those members will come and say, ‘My school’s doing this, don’t penalize them,’” he said.
The room had moved on. One person interrupted him with a suggestion, then another with a new question: What were his ideas on how to force a balanced federal budget, since he disagreed with the constitutional convention route?
“For so many of these guys, I’m like, why don’t you just stay a preacher?”
Peter Boykin, Republican primary candidate
When the event wrapped up, Elmore saw that the man who asked the Parents’ Bill of Rights question was waiting for him by the door. The man extended his hand and mentioned he was friends with Destin Hall, who is expected to be the next House speaker.
He was warm and complimentary, but referred to there being “two or three” good candidates in the race. When Elmore’s campaign manager asked to take a photo, he declined.
Elmore noticed the logo on the man’s fleece: Samaritan’s Purse, the evangelical relief organization that has been a longtime employer of one of his toughest competitors in the primary, former Sen. Ballard, who is based in nearby Boone. Elmore figured there was a good chance the man attended on her behalf.
Ballard, like Elmore, is running on her record as a lawmaker, her reputation as a policy-minded fixer, and her expertise in education. In the Senate, where she served from 2016 until 2023, she chaired two education committees.
Ballard was at the forefront of the legislature’s push to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and worked on the Senate’s first attempt at the Parents’ Bill of Rights. In that effort, she said, she worked closely with current Lt. Gov. Robinson as well as Senate leader Berger.
She left the General Assembly after losing a primary to Hise in 2022. A rule about how counties must be grouped in redistricting drew the two incumbents into the same district. She earns a living running a consulting firm.
Though Ballard has accepted the invitation extended to all GOP lieutenant governor candidates to speak on Robinson’s rally circuit, she has avoided a full-throated endorsement of the MAGA movement.
Instead, she has positioned herself to appeal to unaffiliated voters, invoking her mother’s career as a school teacher, her seven years working in the George W. Bush administration, and her passion for improving data management.
“We could make some better policy if we had more timely data—and that’s across the board from business to education, K12, to higher education to the workforce,” she said.
On abortion, she says she supports the legislature’s recent move to ban the procedure, in most cases, at 12 weeks. Before Roe v. Wade was struck down, she sponsored a bill that would have banned most abortions at 20 weeks. Would she now like to see an earlier ban? “I believe life begins at conception,” she said, but “I don’t think it can be done in North Carolina.”
There are some indications that Ballard’s message is landing. She raised $194,000 from July through December, more than any other Republican candidate in that timeframe. Jim Perry, the majority whip in the Senate, and Bob Luddy, a top school choice donor, gave her campaign the maximum.
The only authoritative polling Ballard has seen was conducted in October. Eighty-three percent of the 600 likely Republican primary voters in the John Locke Foundation survey said they were undecided. No candidate cracked 5 percent.
In order to win next month’s primary outright, a candidate must draw more than 30 percent. If no one does, the runner-up can request a runoff.
Though primary day looms, Ballard is imagining what’s beyond it: a match up with Hunt, another female lawmaker with very different takes on key issues.
“Everyone’s, I think, intrigued by that possibility, to be honest with you,” she said. “How would that play out is the question.”
Carli Brosseau is a reporter at The Assembly. She joined us from The News & Observer, where she was an investigative reporter. Her work has been honored by the Online News Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and published by ProPublica and The New York Times.