North Carolina election tests Trump clout

A tossup special election in North Carolina is shaping up as a pre2020 test of President Donald Trump’s pull on voters and whether the suburbs are continuing the flight from Republicans that fueled the party’s 2018 House election losses.

The House district flows eastward from the prosperous Charlotte suburbs into rural areas hugging the South Carolina border. It’s up for grabs after state officials invalidated last November’s election following allegations of voter fraud by a GOP operative.

The Democrat in that race, former Marine and Harvard MBA Dan McCready, is running again, portraying himself as a centrist who puts “country over party” and opposes impeaching Trump. His opponent, Republican state senator and attorney Dan Bishop, is a Trump loyalist who sponsored the state’s nowrepealed 2016 law restricting the use of bathrooms by transgender people.

Both parties are pouring resources into the state, hoping to claim a moraleboosting win to juice candidate recruitment and fundraising. But the real Xfactor is Trump himself, who parachutes into Fayetteville on Monday for an electioneve rally in hopes of securing a district he won by 11 points in 2016 and that Republicans have held since 1963. With Vice President Mike Pence also campaigning for Bishop on Monday, the race is testing Trump’s influence on voters and whether Democrats can sustain the momentum that powered their midterm election wins.