Budd & Hines Scrub NC Campaign Sites, Cover Up Anti-Abortion Rhetoric, Trump Ties

Midterm Scramble: NC GOP Candidates Ted Budd and Bo Hines Are Now Hiding Trump Ties & Anti-Abortion Planks

NYTimes, August 31, 2023; excerpts

Mr. Budd updated his website in late July, well after North Carolina’s May 17 primary, according to archived pages reviewed by The Times.

Until July 22, [Budd’s] home page featured a prominent, all-caps message that read “endorsed by President Donald J. Trump,” above a photo of Mr. Budd with the former president and a sign-up form urging voters to “join President Trump in supporting” him.

But since July 23, it has instead featured a rotating slide show of endorsers, starting with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina and circulating through former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee before reaching Mr. Trump. A viewer would need to look at that spot on the page for about 20 seconds to see Mr. Trump.

“It’s pretty basic — general elections have different dynamics than primary elections,” Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Mr. Budd’s campaign, said in an email.

“We face a female opponent, so we’ve added prominent female politicians who have endorsed Ted,” Mr. Felts said. (Mr. Budd’s Democratic opponent is Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.)

Other differences have been more subtle. Mr. Budd, for example, has made no changes to a page that outlines his views on abortion, but he has moved the link to that page lower on his website’s list of his positions; it was second as of July 23, but is now fifth.

From: 19thnews.org:

And in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District [gerrymandered into the north central region] since winning the May 17 primary, Republican Bo Hines has removed his “life and family” issues section from his website, which previously linked to a fundraising page touting his belief “that life begins at conception and that we must protect the rights of the unborn.” . . .

[Budd & Hines are not alone.] Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, who is trailing incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in recent polling, removed language from his website indicating support for a “federal personhood law” that would treat abortion as murder.

Tom Barrett, running in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District against Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, removed language saying he would “always work to protect life from conception.”

Before his North Carolina primary, Hines, who is running for an open seat, told the Raleigh News & Observer that he would back legislation banning all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest. He hasn’t weighed in publicly on the matter since the primary. . . .

All three political contests are rated toss-ups by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. While most forecasters still expect Republicans to take the House in the November elections, Democrats’ chances have improved in recent weeks, in part because of voters’ opposition to near-total abortion bans.