Josh Stein wins the Democratic primary for governor of North Carolina

Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general, handily won the state’s Democratic primary for governor on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, paving the way for a showdown with a fiery Republican rival in a race that will be closely contested and will be closely monitored.

This year’s race will likely be the nation’s most expensive outside of the presidential election, as Democrats try to retain a governor’s post they have held for all but four of the past 31 years, a rare southern stronghold for the party.

The 57-year-old Stein, who was endorsed by Gov. Roy Cooper, a term-limited Democrat, easily defeated his four top opponents, including Michael Morgan, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice.

Now Mr. Stein, who has presented himself as a stable and experienced leader, will turn his attention to his opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. The attorney general has portrayed Mr. Robinson as an extreme figure distracted by culture war issues.

Mr. Stein has highlighted a number of statements that Mr. Robinson has come under heavy criticism for in recent years, including that Christians are “called to be led by men,” not women, and that “there is no reason why anyone anywhere Even in America, every child should talk about transgenderism, homosexuality and all that kind of filth.”

“Some politicians sow division, stoke hatred and fan the flames of bigotry,” Stein said in a campaign ad that featured clips of Robinson.

Mr. Robinson has dismissed the criticism, while doubling down on anti-LGBTQ comments and portraying Mr. Stein as an extreme liberal.

Political science professors in North Carolina say Mr. Stein will have an easy time portraying Mr. Robinson as a Trump-aligned Republican who wants to further roll back abortion rights. A big question is which candidate will benefit more from the huge influx of voters the state has seen in recent years; many have settled in the suburbs of Charlotte and Raleigh. President Biden won the counties that included these cities in 2020, but lost many of the surrounding areas to Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Stein, a native of Chapel Hill and a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard, became the first Jewish person elected to statewide office in North Carolina in 2016 when he defeated Buck Newton, a Republican, to become attorney general . He was previously a senator.

However, his 2020 re-election victory showed how small his margins could be: he won by fewer than 14,000 votes that year, with 50.1 percent of the vote. Mr. Trump won the state in 2020 by 1.3 percentage points, and Mr. Cooper by more than 4 percentage points.