‘A near constant parade of politicos’
First, former President Donald Trump announced he was coming to the Cape Fear region, although his April 20 campaign rally at the Wilmington International Airport fell victim to inclement weather. Then 12 days later, it was President Joe Biden’s turn to visit the Port City.
For a relatively small urban area, Wilmington is sure attracting a lot of political attention early in the 2004 presidential campaign.
But why? The Port City isn’t the biggest city in North Carolina, nor the state’s economic engine.
New Hanover County, however, has the attribute both presidential candidates are intensely attracted to: toss-up status. And in a state that’s very much up for grabs with few counties that can really be called competitive, the recent high-profile visits could just be the start of a busy political season for Wilmington residents.
Dr. Chris Cooper, director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University, said North Carolina is going to be on the very short list of states that will receive near constant attention from both parties.
And while money can buy political ads and volunteers can canvass neighborhoods, nothing replaces the buzz created by the appearance of a top candidate or other popular party dignitaries, like a former president.
“I think we’re doing to see a near constant parade of politicos to the Old North State until November,” Cooper said. “And if you ask me for one county that’s going to be ground zero for all of this attention, it’s going to be New Hanover County.”
Dr. Aaron King, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, agrees.
“Wilmington is the type of place large enough where there’s a lot of people here, it has the infrastructure to make it easy to get into and out of, and it’s diverse enough where both candidates feel they can make inroads,” he said. “It’s sort of a battleground county in a battleground state.”
Purple county in a purple state
Republicans have carried North Carolina in 11 of the past 13 presidential elections, only losing in 1976 and 2008 to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, respectively.
But the margins of victory have always been close − 49.8% for Trump and 46.2% for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 49.9% for Trump and 48.6% for Biden in 2020. In New Hanover County, Trump beat Clinton in 2016, but narrowly lost to Biden in 2020.
Early polls show Trump and Biden in a very close race for the Tar Heel State, but the former president generally leading.
North Carolina voters, however, have often divided their loyalties when it
comes to statewide offices, often picking Democrats for top jobs in Raleigh even when they vote Republican for positions in Washington.
According to the latest figures from the New Hanover County Board of Elections, the county has 53,689 registered Republican voters, 50,221 registered Democrats, and 74,733 voters registered as unaffiliated.
Cooper noted that New Hanover was the only one of North Carolina’s 100 counties to correctly pick the winners of all of the state’s top statewide races in 2020.
“So, it’s a county that’s very much in play,” he said. “And with the Wilmington area’s continued growth, with a mix of migrants and natives, that looks like it is very much going to continue.”
Re-energizing the base
But Biden’s visit to Wilmington to make a major environmental announcement, this one on billions in funding to replaced cancer-causing lead pipes in public water systems, also is more than just a push to win North Carolina in the fall.
The announcement that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will spend billions over the next decade to replace every lead pipe in the country is an appeal to traditional left-leaning Democratic voters that the president hasn’t forgotten them.
It also is an attempt to re-energize normally reliable Democratic voters who are, arguably, less than excited about Biden’s accomplishments during his first four years in office and his reelection campaign.
“Moves like this probably aren’t really made to shore up the base more than to mobilize the base to show them they and their concerns haven’t been forgotten and to get them off the coach,” Cooper said.
Coinciding with Earth Day and Infrastructure Week, the Biden administration has rolled out a series of new funding and policy initiatives − including new PFAS drinking water standards, streamlining permitting processes, and expanding efforts to combat climate change − to spur new clean energy projects and increase protections for the environment. Both are causes that are popular with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, a group that has been less than enamored by many of Biden’s actions, and inactions, in office so far.
King said tackling topics like environmental protection that are broadly supported also allows the candidates to stay away from thorny and divisive social issues like abortion.
“No one is campaigning on pro-lead pipes,” he said.
King added that Wilmington also is a good fit for announcing new action to remove toxins from drinking water considering the region’s recent history of water quality issues.
“Because of the pollution from GenX and all those other ‘forever chemicals,’ people here are very mindful of what’s in their water,” he said. “Biden also might get a little bit more sympathy on environmental issues that he might not get in other areas because of our beaches and coastal areas and how important they are to our economy and quality of life.”
‘Everything is a campaign visit’
The exhibit-hall-turned-presidential event space in the Wilmington Convention Center wasn’t large. The White House had made it clear the president’s visit was for a policy announcement, not a campaign stop. But the reaction of the VIPs in the audience and the flier on each seat praising Biden’s investment in American creaking infrastructure and attacking “extreme Republicans in Congress” painted a different picture.
Cooper said that legally there is a difference between an office-related presidential visit and a campaign event, such as how the events are funded and the use of government resources.
“But in reality everything is a campaign visit, especially at this point in the election season,” he said.
With an energized and standingroom only crowd, the president took the stage around 5 p.m. Thursday.
While playing up the environmental and economic initiatives undertaken by his administration, he sprinkled in shots at Trump − although he didn’t refer to him by name, calling his Republican rival his “predecessor.”
The crowd, a mix of local Democratic dignitaries and community groups and activists, lapped it up, cheering the president’s remarks on improving the economy for all while booing his references to economic favoritism to the rich and corporations shown by Republicans.
“I promise to be a president for all Americans whether you vote for me or not,” Biden said.
But one of the largest cheers was when the president promised to continue rebuilding the country’s aging infrastructure, and not just during “Infrastructure Week.”
Biden said all four years his “predecessor” was in office his administration made a big deal about marking Infrastructure Week with promises.
“But you know what? He didn’t build a damn thing,” the president said to thunderous applause.
Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on X/Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from the Green South Foundation and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work.