Colin Campbell

When former Governor Roy Cooper jumped in on the Democratic side, that kind of cleared the field.

Some other candidates that had name recognition and were running dropped out at that point in the race.

On the Republican side, there was a lot of interest when Tom Tillis announced last year that he was going to drop out of the race.

Other members of Congress who are Republicans were interested at one point.

There was discussion of Laura Trump.

The president's daughter-in-law might be interested in the race.

Ultimately, the race there was for President Trump's endorsement.

A lot of people talked to him.

And as soon as he weighed in with Michael Watley being his pick for his endorsement, that caused all the other folks to sort of step aside and let Watley run.

Granted, there are two other candidates that are noteworthy in this primary.

Michelle Morrow, who beat a Republican incumbent for state superintendent of public instruction a couple years ago.

She's more on sort of the fringe extreme of the party.

Same goes for Don Brown, who's an attorney whose claim to fame is that he

represented some of the January 6th defendants in court.

Both of those not expected to win, but certainly may test the value of the Trump endorsement in a race where the Trump endorsed candidate, Michael Whatley, like Ashley said, is not that well known.

Yeah, he's sort of this old school kind of moderate North Carolina Democratic politician, was an attorney from a small town around Rocky Mount, first served in the state legislature back in the 80s, eventually became attorney general for the state, waited for 16 years in that role before he decided to run for governor.

and then had two terms where he's fairly popular.

He's done well in the polls here still, despite some of the attack ads coming from the Republicans since he jumped in this race, still seems to have an edge here.

He's got this sort of folksy approach that seems to play well here in North Carolina.

Yeah, they haven't won a Senate seat in North Carolina since 2008.