Budd has been outraised by McCrory, who lost his reelection bid in 2016, and trails him in recent polls — McCrory’s internal polling shows him with a 15-point lead, while data from a pro-Budd super PAC has McCrory ahead by just 3 points.
Mark Walker, a conservative former congressman who is also seeking the GOP Senate nomination, has criticized Budd for his failure to command a lead after receiving both Trump’s backing and major funding from the Club for Growth’s super PAC, which plans to spend $10 million on Budd.
“They’ve made a commitment to already spend $3 million on TV because the Trump endorsement for Mr. Budd did not push the needle like it has in some other states,” Walker said during a radio interview with WBT in Charlotte in September. “At some point, people have to ask why.”
Budd’s campaign says its fundraising rapidly accelerated after the Trump endorsement in June, not just from small-dollar contributions but from donors who were previously uninterested in the campaign. Budd learned of the endorsement just minutes before Trump announced it onstage at the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention this summer, raising questions in state political circles about why Trump decided to support Budd so early in the race and while his name recognition remained low.
Jonathan Felts, a senior adviser to Budd’s campaign, said the Trump endorsement has been key to Budd’s ability to catch up with McCrory. They expected it would take from Budd’s May Senate campaign launch until at least March 2022 to close the fundraising and name ID gap between Budd and McCrory. Now, the campaign is nearly there, campaign officials say.
“What we had planned to do in 10 months we got done in six months, thanks to Donald Trump’s endorsement,” Felts said.
The downside, however, is that Budd’s backing from the polarizing former president risks turning off some moderates, a voting demographic Republicans in North Carolina and other competitive states need to win in November.
Trump has yet to endorse in Arizona, another swing state that is pivotal to the battle to capture the Senate majority. But he appeared at a fundraiser for candidate Blake Masters at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month — one day after Masters released a video declaring that “Trump won in 2020,” a statement made in an apparent attempt to secure Trump’s backing.
In recent polls, Masters trails well behind state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whom Trump continues to publicly taunt for not doing enough to overturn Biden’s win in Arizona.
The first primaries of the year are still three months away — and Arizona’s is nine months away — so there’s time for Trump’s Senate endorsees to build enough momentum to overtake their opponents. At least one of them, retired football star Herschel Walker in Georgia, already has a wide lead and a considerable fundraising advantage in the GOP primary.
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