Ex-Justice Cheri Beasley joins North Carolina Senate race

The first Black woman to serve as chief justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court announced her entry Tuesday into the state's highly competitive U.S. Senate race.

Cheri Beasley formally declared her bid for the Democratic nomination after months of deliberation. She joins four other Democrats who have already begun campaigning to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Richard Burr

“For too many families across North Carolina, the doors of opportunity have been closed. They’ve been left behind and ignored for too long,” Beasley said in a video announcing her campaign. “I’m running for Senate because it’s time for that to change.”

The winner of the Democratic primary early next year will advance to a general election fight in November 2022 that could determine control of the Senate, now split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties in the Democrats' favor.

Former GOP Congressman Mark Walker and former Gov. Pat McCrory are competing on the Republican side.

Just two Black women have served in the Senate, and with Harris’s departure to become Joe Biden’s vice president, there are currently no Black women senators. Beasley is looking to change that.

“Whether it’s health care, education, the ability to find work that supports a family or retire with dignity, too often Washington only responds to the well-connected,” she said in her video. “As we come out of this pandemic, now more than ever, that needs to end.”

Beasley enters the race with strong name recognition as a former judge with a track record of raising lots of campaign money. She is the only declared candidate who has been elected to statewide office, which she accomplished twice: once in 2008 for an appellate court seat and again in 2014 for an associate justice position on the state Supreme Court.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper named her the high court's chief justice in 2019. But then she narrowly lost election to a full term as chief justice in 2020, falling short by just 401 votes out of nearly 5.4 million ballots cast as she was defeated by Associate Justice Paul Newby.

Despite her past electoral successes, Beasley faces a formidable opponent in Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson, a progressive candidate who raised nearly $1.3 million between the time he entered the race in late January and the end of March. Jackson has a much wider social media following, can generate attention through his work in state government and has been campaigning on a tour of all 100 counties.

Former state Sen. Erica Smith, who unsuccessfully sought the 2020 Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, is trying again to pull off a victory. Virologist Richard Watkins and Beaufort Mayor Rett Newton are also seeking the Democratic nod.

___

Follow Anderson on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson.

___

Anderson is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.