An NC Republican just scrubbed his website. He’s not the only one moving to the middle

Before the April primary, NC-13 Republican candidate Bo Hines released a commercial where he said, “abortion is absolutely murder, and any Republican politician who’s not willing to say that should not be in office.” In late June, the day the Dobbs v. Jackson decision dropped, Hines said he’d remain “proudly pro-life.”

That was the last day he mentioned abortion in a social media post. Earlier this week, Democrats noted that the 27-year-old candidate had removed references to abortion from his campaign website, despite his strong opinions on the issue earlier in the election cycle.

It’s possible that Hines is seeing the writing on the wall: in a highly competitive district, running a hard right campaign is a risky strategy. Polling of 500 residents in the 13th district showed that a slight majority has an unfavorable view of Donald Trump and are disapproving of Joe Biden’s current job performance. Most notably for Hines, the majority of people polled said that they either didn’t like him or didn’t know how they felt about him.

Even if he’s trying to adjust his strategy, deleting a talking point from your website doesn’t make you a moderate. Hines knows that publicly changing his tune on abortion could dissuade the most impassioned in the party from going out and voting for him, but that being too vocal about his anti-abortion beliefs might deter moderates upset by the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Hines still displays “Endorsed by Donald Trump” on Facebook and Twitter, and he mentions it in a video on his campaign website. He may distance himself further from the former president, but he could also choose to re-align himself with a more palatable hardline conservative.

Meanwhile, opponent Wiley Nickel is being vocal about his shift to the center and separating himself from other Democrats in the process. A commercial his team released Monday features the state senator saying he wants to combat extremism “in both parties,” invoking the names of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as congresspeople who are too far left. He also said he would support “funding the police,” an attempt to distance himself from a leftist talking point that Republicans keep bringing up (despite the fact that none of North Carolina’s major cities have reduced police spending since 2020).

He’s not the only Democrat trying to appeal to moderates; U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley rolled out the group “Law Enforcement for Beasley” this week and noted three specific ways she would work with Republicans on agendas that would support police in her press release. She also chose not to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris today, a move she attributes to campaigning but surely feels like putting distance between the two.

Beasley’s opponent, Ted Budd, seems to be easing off culture wars arguments. Like Hines, he still has mentions of his Trump endorsement on social media. But his recent commercials have been about inflation’s effect on the state, and the most partisan thing he’s done recently is a conference with Thom Tillis about the U.S.-Mexico border. He still has abortion as a talking point on his website, but he isn’t actually talking about it.

The candidates are facing North Carolina’s political reality: we are almost perfectly split down the political middle in statewide races. But Republicans aren’t announcing their change in rhetoric, likely because they know that isolating the hardline members of the party means they won’t vote at all. The only person who notably calls out other Republicans, in fact, is Trump. When others have criticized the party, like Madison Cawthorn, the party mobilizes against them.

Appealing to North Carolina’s elusive “moderate voter” is not a new tactic. It reads more like politics than actual passion for anything, especially when publicly throwing other members of your party under the bus. And just like the countless times it has happened before, it isn’t fooling anyone.