What the only battleground Democrat to do better than Trump says his party needs to learn

Josh Stein’s victory in this year’s North Carolina governor’s race was huge. And his opponent was widely seen as the weakest Republican in a major race this cycle.

Josh Stein’s victory in this year’s North Carolina governor’s race was huge. And his opponent was widely seen as the weakest Republican in a major race this cycle. That doesn’t mean Stein thinks Democrats should miss the lessons of what he did this year. Unlike in the presidential race, a prosecutor with a 20-year record in politics and deep connections to the incumbent Democratic executive, running against an insurgent MAGA star, got the biggest margin of any candidate in any battleground state — despite being hit as an elitist who was soft on crime, immigration and trans rights. Running by talking up law enforcement, jobs and making abortion an issue of respect for women, Stein ended up 15 points ahead of his scandal-ridden opponent Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, when Kamala Harris came in 3 points behind Donald Trump in a state she had thrown herself hard into winning. Just a few months ago, the race was more competitive, with national Republicans pouring millions of dollars into it, when Stein’s pollsters and advisers figured that with voters not knowing much about either, a Republican tilting state might be just as ready to write off Stein as another Democrat who was weak on crime and immigration as they would be to defect from Robinson for all his issues. Ending up 171,000 votes ahead of Trump did more than just make Stein the governor-elect. Democrats on his coattails took every statewide race: for lieutenant governor, attorney general and school superintendent. They also won enough seats in the statehouse to break the GOP supermajority, as well as the only competitive House seat in the South. Amid this, Republicans continue to litigate to throw out 60,000 votes (including those of the Democratic candidate’s parents) to try to win an ultra-narrow state Supreme Court race. The history he made to be the state’s first Jewish governor barely registered in a year when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s own faith appeared to scramble his running mate chances. The same went for the old “Extreme Harvard Radical” tag that Republicans spent millions hitting him with in his first attorney general race. As he sets up his new administration, Stein keeps getting calls from Democrats across the country desperate to know how he ended up being what outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper called the Democrats’ “bright spot on a national stage of disappointment,” carrying a state the party will likely need to start flipping to have a chance in the next presidential race and beyond.