Colin Campbell

Every time they try and so far they've been falling short.

But with Roy Cooper as the candidate, there's a lot of optimism that I'm hearing from Democrats here.

Regardless, this is going to be a really expensive race because there are just so few Senate races around the country that are this competitive.

I've heard anywhere from half a billion to maybe even a full billion dollars could be spent on this race before all is said and done.

I think Trump is going to be sort of the key figure in this race.

Michael Watley, you know, really is a Trump surrogate in many ways.

He's on cable news all the time defending the president's actions.

One interviewer asked Watley if there's anywhere he disagrees on Trump, any issue.

And Watley's response was not in public.

I'm not going to disagree with with Trump in public.

You already see Roy Cooper coming out attacking Whatley for pretty much anything that's coming out of the Trump administration, whether it's issues around the economy, around immigration and ICE and Border Patrol actions that have taken place, some in this state.

It's really going to all come down to Trump-related messaging, I think, on both sides in this particular race.

With the primary not having a whole lot of action between the different U.S.

Senate candidates in either party, I was kind of expecting this to be a low turnout primary.

But so far, that's not actually been the case.

But going back to the 2022 midterm, the last one here.

We're actually up a fair bit in early voting so far in terms of the number of ballots have been cast.

And the majority of those ballots so far have been in the Democratic primary.

Now, North Carolina is an open primary state.

So if you're an unaffiliated voter, which is actually the most popular registration option in the state in recent years.