A bipartisan three-judge panel in North Carolina ruled that a Republican-led effort in the state Legislature to restructure state and county election boards is unconstitutional.

Their ruling, which contained no dissenting opinions, leaves in place the current composition of the state election board, which consists of three Democratic members and two Republican members.

Representatives of the Republican-led parliament did not indicate on Tuesday whether they would appeal the decision.

The legislation, passed last year by the Republican supermajority, would have upset the balance between state and county election boards in the state, creating an eight-member state election board, with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans running for office. the state legislature would have been appointed to the council. . Provincial election boards would be created for similar impasses.

Under current law, the state’s governor appoints the members of the five-member state election board. The process for county election boards, which currently have five members, is more complex, but the governor appoints the chairmen.

Election experts and Democrats, including Governor Roy Cooper, claimed the bill would lead to gridlock on many key election issues.

The three-judge panel, composed of two Republicans and one Democrat, called the effort a “stark and egregious removal of the governor’s appointment power” and said it “violates the governor’s constitutional duties.”

Republicans who support the law face an increasingly short window to appeal the decision in time for the 2024 elections, and will most likely have to go to the state Supreme Court if they want a decision before November.

One of the nation’s most closely watched elections this year will take place in North Carolina, where the race for governor will be a test of Democratic strength in a state whose closely divided electorate includes a large group of newcomers.

After Tuesday’s primaries, North Carolinians will likely have two starkly contrasting candidates to choose from: mild-mannered Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat whose political rise has followed a traditional path, and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a firebrand Republican who then catapulted into politics comments he made defending gun rights in 2018 went viral.

“If you went to a candidate factory and said, ‘Create me the two most different candidates possible,’ I don’t think you could do any better,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a professor of political science at Western Carolina University. “They are just radically different in behavior and ideology.”

Both men would be groundbreaking if elected: Mr. Robinson, 55, would be North Carolina’s first black governor if elected, while Mr. Stein, 57, would be the state’s first Jewish governor.

The race will be closely watched in part because of its potential national implications: Both candidates plan to portray each other in politically extreme terms, which could increase turnout not only for their elections but also for the presidential race in the hotly contested state.

Mr. Stein, like current Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, has tried to avoid culture war issues. Mr. Robinson seems eager to dive into a lot of it, disparaging LGBTQ people, posting comments which were widely regarded as anti-Semitic calling Michelle Obama a man. He also has quoted Adolf Hitler on Facebook and embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud.

Mr. Stein supports access to abortion and is endorsed by abortion rights groups, which are mobilized after Republicans used their new supermajority in the Legislature last year to ban most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Mr Robinson supports a so-called heartbeat law, which would ban the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy, when many women are not yet aware they are pregnant.

His campaign spokesman said Mr. Robinson supports exceptions for rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger, but he did not specify after how many weeks these protections would apply.

Mr. Robinson has dismissed the criticism, portraying it as smears orchestrated by liberals and the news media. He has also insisted to reporters that he has never been anti-Semitic, citing as evidence a trip he took to Israel last fall and outreach to Jewish organizations.

Even as Democrats have won seven of the last eight elections for governor in North Carolina, they have consistently lost federal races: The only Democrat to pick the state for president in nearly fifty years was Barack Obama in 2008.

At a rally in Greensboro on Saturday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Robinson — who worked in furniture manufacturing before turning to politics — had his “full and total support.” Polls show Robinson far ahead of his Republican primary rivals, Dale Folwell, the state treasurer, and Bill Graham, a personal injury and wrongful death attorney.

Mr. Stein leads four other Democratic primary candidates in the polls, including Michael Morgan, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice.

Mr. Robinson has portrayed Mr. Stein as a dull, Biden-centric political insider who is out of touch with the general public.

Mr. Stein has pointed to Mr. Robinson’s numerous statements on culture war topics as evidence that the lieutenant governor is focused on polarizing social issues rather than challenges most voters care about, such as improving education.

Because north carolina is a key swing state this year, the race is likely to generate millions of dollars in fundraising, especially if polls the candidates continue to show neck and neck.

Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., said the race for North Carolina governor will likely be the most expensive and divisive in the country outside of the presidential election. And Mr. Robinson, he added, could capture much of that attention.

“Robinson is very willing to say what he thinks, and sometimes he tries to tiptoe around his past comments,” Mr. Bitzer said. “But he is very much in line with Trump-style politics and the fact of resentment – ​​an ‘us versus them’ mentality.”

Mr. Trump won the state by 1.3 percentage points in 2020, while Mr. Cooper defeated his Republican opponent by more than 4 percentage points that year. Mr. Stein’s victory as attorney general in 2020 was weaker, with 50.1 percent of the vote, a margin of 13,000 votes.

Still, Democrats are counting on Mr. Robinson’s past comments and polarizing approach to motivate voters who want to defeat him.

The question some Republicans have is whether Robinson’s style will be too extreme for swing voters, who make up between 3 and 5 percent of the electorate. They could include many of the hundreds of thousands of people who do moved to North Carolina since 2020, many have settled in the suburbs of Charlotte and Raleigh, the state’s largest cities. President Biden won the counties that included these cities, but lost many of the surrounding areas.

Jonathan Felts, a Republican strategist who runs a super PAC backing Mr. Robinson’s campaign, said the candidate’s image as a “conservative warrior” and political outsider would appeal to Trump’s working-class base who support the conservative North Carolina dominates, much of which is rural. .

Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist who is advising both Mr. Stein and Mr. Cooper, said residents have historically shown they like balance in their government, with a Democratic governor who will keep the Republican Legislature in check.

Mr. Jackson said Mr. Stein will let his experience speak for itself and will speak during the campaign about his work fighting the fentanyl crisis, putting child predators in jail and keeping communities safer.

Both Mr. Stein and Mr. Robinson have prioritized education issues in their campaigns.

Some Republicans, like Mr. Robinson’s rivals in the party’s primary, are concerned that Mr. Robinson’s rhetoric could cost conservatives the House.

Paul Shumaker, a Republican consultant in the state and chief strategist for Mr. Graham, said he believes Mr. Robinson “will become a burden” on Mr. Trump. In a memo that Mr. Shumaker sent to other advisers this year, he wrote that Mr. Robinson would “create a toxic red tide for Republicans” that could impact the vote.

At the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr Robinson said spoke about how his name was always mentioned ‘in connection with social issues’.

“According to them, I hate everyone,” he said, before adding that what he did was not about hate. “We should operate because of what we love.”

Mr. Stein said this recently The news and the observer that Mr. Robinson’s beliefs were not the beliefs that “a leader of a thriving, growing, diverse state could have.”

Voters in South Carolina head to the polls Saturday to cast their ballots in a Republican presidential primary that could well decide the political fate of the state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, in her long-running effort to topple former president’s march To derail Donald J. Trump to the election. Republican nomination.

Here’s what you can see in the Palmetto State as votes are counted Saturday evening.

How soon will the race be called?

As we saw last month in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, the speed of a race call can give the victor — in both cases, Mr. Trump — a sense of momentum, even an air of inevitability. Iowa was called for Mr. Trump before the caucuses even ended.

Polls in South Carolina close at 7 p.m., and Ms. Haley is expected to speak in Charleston once the winner is declared. The Trump campaign will hold a watch party in the state capital of Columbia, where the former president is expected to speak.

An early night for the two remaining candidates will say a lot about where the race goes when they head to Michigan next week ahead of Super Tuesday on March 5, when 15 states will vote to award 874 of the 2,429 Republican delegates.

If the contest culminates in the drumbeat that polls predict it will produce, Ms. Haley, once considered South Carolina’s political star, could be on the verge of defeat. The poll averages are leaving her behind Trump by 30 percentage points.

Just after the New Hampshire primary, Mark Harris, the chief strategist for Ms. Haley’s super PAC, SFA Fund, said the former governor did not need to win her home state, but she did need to exceed her share of the vote in New Hampshire. Hampshire – 43 percent – ​​to show she is making progress with Republican voters.

Betsy Ankney, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, echoed that on Friday, saying, “We never got into those benchmarks. We’re not going to start it now.” But before she pulls off a victory, Ms. Haley must receive some kind of consolation prize from the state where she was born, raised, served as governor and still lives.

Ms. Haley has firmly said she will stay in the race regardless of the outcome in South Carolina. Still, she’s eager to exceed expectations so she can remind voters of her favorite campaign T-shirt: “Underestimate me. That will be fun.”

Poll after poll has shown that most Americans are unhappy about a rematch between President Biden and Mr. Trump, the leading party nominees in 2020. Mr. Biden won the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Feb. 8 with more than 96 percent of the vote. to vote. . But only 131,302 people voted, at the low end of the expected turnout that was always predicted to be anemic.

Unlike Iowa, where freezing temperatures and blowing snow likely hampered attendance, the weather in South Carolina on Saturday will be fine – beautiful, even. Low turnout can be attributed to the state’s lack of drama: Even Ms. Haley’s supporters have little confidence that she could win. But poor turnout among South Carolinians could add a data point to Ms. Haley’s claim that Americans are desperate for a fresh, younger face to vote for in November — or more broadly, the point that neither candidate has voters in has inspired a sullen mood. mood.

How will the Low Country fare?

South Carolina residents like to divide themselves into three sections: the Upstate around Greenville and Spartanburg, where the question is: Which church do you belong to?; the Midlands, dominated by the state capital, where the question is: which agency do you work for?; and the milder Lowcountry of Charleston and the coast, where the question is: what do you drink?

Trump’s strength will lie with evangelical conservatives in the Upstate, and his dominance among elected state officials in Columbia is evidence of Ms. Haley’s weakness in the Midlands, either because of the feathers she ruffled as governor or because the tendency of politicians to take sides. with the favorite.

That leaves the Lowcountry, where affluent Republicans are renovating 19th-century mansions in Charleston and Beaufort, golfing on Hilton Head or building lavish beach houses in Charleston’s Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island suburbs — and where Ms. Haley lives, on Kiawah Island. . The Lowcountry should be Haley country.

But a wave of newcomers — the largest cohort from New York and New Jersey — has led to a proliferation of more middle-class suburbs inland around Charleston, as well as in Horry County, home to Myrtle Beach. They weren’t there for Governor Haley.

The way this region votes will say something about Mr. Trump’s appeal to the well-educated, affluent Republicans who once controlled the party, and to suburbanites unaffected by their past experiences with Ms. Haley.