Cheri Beasley

Raleigh, North Carolina Congressman Ted Budd might soon be the winner of the quietest swing state Senate race in the country. When North Carolina senator Richard Burr announced he would not seek re-election in this year's midterms, Democrats saw the seat as a potential pick-up to expand their Senate majority. Instead, Budd is polling ahead of his opponent, former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley, by more than six points. Budd closed out his campaign Monday night with an intimate rally at GOP headquarters in Raleigh. It was clear that he had worked long and hard on the trail — he appeared to have dropped a significant amount of weight since his announcement and was on the verge of losing his voice.

A new ad from North Carolina Senate candidate Ted Budd is going on offense against his Democrat opponent Cheri Beasley's record of being soft on crime. Beasley served as the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 2019 to 2020. During her tenure, the state's highest court ruled that it was unconstitutional to subject some repeat sex offenders to GPS tracking. The case against the state was brought by Torrey Grady, who was convicted of anally raping a seven-year-old boy in 1996 and then raping and impregnating a fifteen-year-old girl in 2006. As a recidivist, Grady was forced to wear an ankle monitor under North Carolina law. He was arrested again in 2017 for failing to register as a sex offender and change his address on file.