The Berger Perplex

 

Last Thursday, Phil Berger Jr. announced on X that he would not be running for reelection in 2028. What? First Phil Berger Sr. bites the dust in the March primary. Now Number One Son Phil Junior announces he's going to be off of the state Supreme Court when his current term expires in '28.

Before we can begin to clap his exit, the dern Carolina Journal, the organ of the John Locke Foundation, immediately understands that Junior has his eye on the Chief Justice seat currently occupied by Rumpelstiltskin Paul Newby, the most highly partisan chief justice in our lifetime. In other words, last Thursday what Phil Junior was trying to say on X was "I'm not going to run for this seat on the Supreme Court, but for a wholly different seat -- the most important seat."

Symmetry. Berger first ran ten years ago in 2016 for the Supreme Court seat that Paul Newby was vacating so that he could run for Chief Justice. Berger has a practice of following in his master's footsteps. (Newby is required by law to retire at age 76. He'll be 73 in 2028, which means he would have to retire in the middle of that 6-year term. So tell me they haven't worked this all out in advance.)

Berger's reputation as a Republican partisan comes from his refusing repeatedly to recuse himself from deciding cases in which his own father, Phil Berger Senior (the about-to-be-former President Pro Tem of the NC Senate), was a defendant (who stood to benefit at least politically from the decision). The crucial Harper v. Hall redistricting decision, which had thrown out the Republicans' 2021 General Assembly districts as unconstitutional gerrymandering; the Voter I.D. case; the Leandro school funding case. Occasionally, when he's been challenged for his family relation he's referred the question of recusal to the other justices, and they always vote 4-2, "Hell, no! Junior doesn't need to recuse himself, because Daddy as a defendant is only a defendant because he was acting in his official capacity as leader of the Senate." 

It was a regular Berger family duopoly of power.

A reminder of how Phil Jr. got hatched:

First, he ran in 2014 for the seat vacated by Congressman Howard Coble. He was backed by wads of money and the full-bore influence of his father, but Phil Junior lost to Mark Walker (of noted memory). Lost the Republican primary when a lot of pundits thought he'd win.

Following quickly that humiliating defeat, Phil Junior got himself appointed to an administrative law judgeship. In 2016, he took the next step and challenged Judge Linda Stephens for a seat on the Court of Appeals and won. That was the same year Trump arrived. Plus Junior benefited from a last minute legislative stunt that Phil Senior pulled off in the short session of the General Assembly the summer of 2016. He got the law changed as regards random "ballot order," insuring that candidates that belong to the same party as the sitting governor (Pat McCrory) get listed first on the ballot. Berger beat Stephens by a slim margin, 22,099 votes. He quit the seat in 2020, to run for the Newby seat on the Supreme Court. You could say the boy exhibits ambition, and he's in a hurry.

Disappearance of a Religious Freedom Advisor

 

Former 3-term Congressman Mark Walker couldn't even hang onto the sinecure (job with no duties) that Trump invented for him as a consolation prize after he ended Walker's political career by endorsing Ted Budd instead of him for the US Senate in 2022 and then squeak-toy Addison McDowell instead of him for Congress in the 2024 Republican primary in the 6th Congressional District. Walker had even trudged to Mar-a-Lago like a good little supplicant and begged Trump to endorse him instead of Ted Budd for Senate and reportedly agreed to drop out and run for a congressional seat if only Trump would endorse him for that. Kissing the ring sucks when it's both fruitless and the boss stinks.

So because of whatever sympathy Trump felt for the man, he invented a title specially for Walker: Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, to be attached to the State Department, a completely made-up job with no defined duties. But appointment to ambassador required Senate approval, and for whatever reasons, both senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd wouldn't support him. The nomination died, and Trump went another route, appointed Walker as "Principal Advisor on Global Religious Freedom" in a wholly invented new position at the State Department. Walker lasted just 90 days. On April 21 (just last week!), the State Department made the terse announcement that Mark Walker no longer worked at the State Department  -- no explanation given.

Walker used to be a pastor of a church and casts a mild aura, though he was tough enough to beat Phil Berger Jr. in his very first Republican primary -- and the subsequent runoff -- for the 6th CD in 2014. The entire Berger Family Machine had been in full gear for Junior, and Berger did indeed beat Walker in the first round: 34.27% to 25.20% (in a very crowded field of seven other candidates). But by the runoff between Berger and Walker in July 2014, Walker had turned it around and he beat young Berger by 20 points -- 59.85% to Berger's 40%. Walker won that runoff by hitting every church picnic and community rag-pulling across the 6th, showing the people what a mild-mannered and approachable Christian he was, a defender of God and American rural values. He was better at grassroots campaigning than Berger, and he sharpened his attack on Berger, implying he was essentially a bought-and-paid for arm of a machine that feathered its own nest -- thus reminding voters of the Berger Family reputation for shady power moves (a reputation that would ultimately end Phil Berger Senior's career after he became a failed promoter of gambling casinos). I suspect Walker beat Phil Berger Jr. at the cost of making an eternal enemy out of Daddy, and I have to wonder if Berger animosity is behind the downward trajectory of Walker's career.  

Anyway, apparently the Trump State Department no longer needs the services of an advisor on global religious freedom.

 

Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

 

Politicians abhor a vacuum as much as nature does, and the sudden concession of NC Senate President Phil Berger late yesterday afternoon has created one of the biggest vacuums in North Carolina history. Berger had ultimate power over every bill that made it through to a vote, every appointment to every important post that the General Assembly controls, every ambition of every fellow Republican senator who wanted to rise. Berger was the undisputed king, and perhaps no one will celebrate his absence more than some of his own allies.

The resentment of putative allies got a surprise airing yesterday in the New York Times, when reporter Eduardo Medina outed Sen. Thom Tillis for secretly lobbying wealthy Republican donors against Berger. On a Zoom call last month, well before the primary, Thom Tillis was clear that Berger had to go because he's too power-hungry, too authoritarian, too dismissive of any idea not his own, and too already fat with campaign cash.

So I can only imagine the ambitions right now surging through the Berger troops still in the Senate, the ones who could not rise because Berger stood in the way. The rivalries will now show themselves in the Raleigh Thunderdome. And all the while the in-fighting goes on and consumes the Republican ecology, the date of the mid-term reckoning with voters advances apace. Who knows? Voters appear quite irritated with abusers of power, and perhaps all the GOP's corrupt gerrymandering may not be shield enough against the wrath to come.

Meanwhile, Sam Page can take his seat in January as a new back-bencher -- he may need two seats to accommodate that ridiculous chapeau. He'll soon learn that his vote has been pre-programmed by higher ups (and probably doesn't matter anyway, if the Republican super-majority holds. Ha!). What High Sheriff Sam Page doesn't know about being low-man in a new pecking order might possibly be a harsh and disappointing education.

 

Kings of Gambling Mean To Own North Carolina

 

 

The gambling industry has a two-prong strategy for taking North Carolina: First, the push stage-managed by the Phil Berger clan to put a physical gambling casino in Rockingham County (and ultimately in three other rural counties). The money trail in that mis-fire went back to The Cordish Company, a developer of "gaming destinations."

The second hustle is all about online gambling. The leading player looking for favors is the corporate entity known as DraftKings, a huge online gambling industry leader with a very eerie website that put me in mind of actually being inside a windowless but gleaming casino, slowly losing my wits. DraftKings' parent is DK Crown Holdings Inc., "a leading digital sports entertainment provider." They recently turned up in an investigative piece into a key race for the NC Senate, sticking their thumb on the scale to oust incumbent Republican Sen. Chris Measmer in NCS 34 and put in Republican Kevin Crutchfield (who was recently a one-term member of the NC House). Crutchfield won the primary even after news came out that DK Crown Holdings Inc. was behind big donations to super-PACS that opened a ridiculous frontal assault on the character of Chris Measmer (ridiculous because they attacked him as a RINO when he's in actuality pretty MAGAfied). (Measmer was already trailing heavy personal baggage, which I described back in February.)

Crutchfield

 

The anti-Measmer attack ads were funded by an entity called the American Conservative Fund. According to the excellent investigative reporting of Nora O'Neill, "the Federal Election Commission filings show American Conservative Fund is funded entirely by another political group called Win for America, which is entirely funded by DK Crown Holdings, Inc."

They wanted Chris Measmer to lose his seat bad, which means they wanted Kevin Crutchfield bad and are counting on him for ... what? That question alone ought to set Kevin Crutchfield up for knocking down in November by Democrat April Cook. I wrote about her back in February and was taken with her prospects. She's now been endorsed by Carolina Forward. She can beat Crutchfield, who's now dragging his own weary baggage.

Anyway, why such financial interest in little ole North Carolina by various fronts in the gambling biz? (And I do wonder what other General Assembly races featured big gambling money.) In the case of DraftKings, its very popular and I suspect amazingly lucrative SportsBook only very recently became legal (March of '24) after the passage of H 347, which legalized sports betting specifically but not "casino" action -- slots, roulette, and other live-dealer games, which according to DraftKings' website they're very into. Online casino betting -- still banned in North Carolina, but the General Assembly already opened that door a crack and invited DraftKings in.

 

Keeping Up With the Slow Death of Titan

 

I always learn stuff from Bryan Anderson's reporting, like the basic statutory process for recounting votes in the Berger/Page upset election in NC Senate Dist. 26:

State law and historical precedent calls for a machine recount first. After that, the trailing candidate has 24 hours to request a partial hand recount for a random sample of about 3% of primary day precincts, early voting sites, or both. If the partial hand recount produces results that indicate a different outcome in the race, a full hand recount would be triggered.

 

Yesterday (Wednesday), Berger asked the State Board of Elections (SBOE -- majority Republican) to alter that schedule slightly, to also do a hand recount on any ballots that the machine recount identified as "undervotes" (where voters picked no candidate in the race) or "overvotes" (where voters picked both candidates). Those numbers are already known: 217 undervotes and 3 overvotes out of the 26,000 votes cast in Rockingham and Guilford counties. 

 

Berger wanted yesterday those 220 ballots examined during the machine recount. The SBOE declined Berger's request, perhaps because those three Republican SBOE members are quite aware that the whole state is watching them very closely in this particular instance, on high alert for any finagling. So SBOE Chair Francis DeLuca (as dependably and consistently partisan a conservative as any GOP wet-dream could conjure and put in control of North Carolina elections) sounded like a slightly shocked Aunt Polly about Berger's request: “We follow the law! If it’s in the statute, we follow it. But there was nothing in that request that went by statute.” 

Berger intends ultimately (and mysteriously) to "determine the voter's intent" behind those 220 undervotes and overvotes, and I reckon those assumed intentions end up being at least one of the arguments in the eventual law suit. Berger only needs to find 24 of those under-voters and get them to swear in an affidavit that their votes would have/should have gone to Berger. If I were one of those people, I would play it safe and claim that I was on prescription drugs that day and didn't mean to skip that race and would have voted enthusiastically for Mr. Berger had I not been in a not-unpleasing drug haze). 

 

The machine recount in Rockingham is happening right now at this hour. The machine recount in those precincts of Guilford that are in S 26 happened yesterday, resulted in minus-1 vote from both Berger and Page, so no change in the outcome. All eyes on Rockingham today.

Ain't No Simple Thing To Steal an Election

 

BREAKING NEWS from Laura Leslie: 

North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) has called for a recount in his District 26 primary contest against Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, who holds a narrow lead in official county totals.

According to the final canvasses in Rockingham and Guilford counties last week, with 26,249 votes cast in the race, Page has 23 more votes than Berger, a margin of 0.08%. That’s well within the 1% margin in state law for a losing candidate in a non-statewide race to request a recount....

Because the district covers more than one county, the State Board of Elections has jurisdiction over the recount process, but the actual recounts are still conducted at the county level. The state board sent detailed instructions to Guilford and Rockingham counties on March 14. 

 

I'm not normally (yip!) conspiracy-minded, but in an age when massive theft is on plain view and actually unashamed to be seen in its native garb, if there was a moment for election theft, it would be now rather than later. And don't you wonder what those "detailed instrux" said? 

It's a machine recount, but in both Rockingham and Guilford, there's a paper-trail. Voters fill in a paper ballot that they then feed into a tabulator (Rockingham County uses the DS200 Vote Tabulator). Could the innards of the DS200 be jiggered to flip the election? Dunno, but I bet it would be hard, but totally within the skill set of the people who run elections now and who owe their jobs to Phil Berger. Just sayin'.

But even then, any substantial change in vote totals from the machine recount would trigger a second hand-eye recount, and that's when those paper ballots would presumably furnish the truth. 

The Interesting Political Climate of 2026

 

The closeness of the Phil Berger/Sam Page race is a reminder that, even in an era of nationalized politics, state legislative primaries can still turn on local dynamics. Relationships and local turnout patterns—what political scientist V.O. Key once called “friends and neighbors voting”—still matter, and occasionally they decide who holds power.

--Christopher Cooper, Old North State Politics

 

 

Sam Page, currently 23 votes ahead

 

 

The fact that Phil Berger couldn't win even with the Trump endorsement -- that he couldn't nationalize his importance to the voters of NC Senate Dist. 26 by tying himself to the Trump -- suggests to me that the MAGA base -- at least, portions of it, particularly in rural areas -- are actively trying to look away from Trump like you might drop your eyes or turn away your head when you see your friend embarrassing himself. Country people are always embarrassed for the swaggering braggarts in their own families. So a local candidate tied to what is in so many countless ways a walking ineptitude was of no particular help to Phil Berger on March 3rd. His obvious corruption in trying to force a gambling casino on the good Christians of Rockingham County brought him down. Trump couldn't save him because Trump is now a spectacle of badly staged policy swerves. War? Poorly calculated distractions featuring bad and un-capable people, even though the Noem woman is gone.

 

The lesson for Democrats might be: Find the local, fly the local flag, defend the local. Don't forget that the biggest local issue might, in fact, be the Republican incumbent's own character, his/her votes, his/her trumpian odor, his/her public corruption for the sake of power.

 

The Cowboy Calf-Ropes the Leader of the Pack

 

Sam Page, March 3, 2026. Photo Bryan Anderson

 

 

That sharp tack Jeffrey Billman, the best investigative reporter in the state IMO, has just published a deep primer on Phil Berger* and how the President Pro Tem of the NC Senate got himself into such career-ending trouble with the voters of Rockingham County, who have voted Berger out and replaced him with the county's high sheriff and drugstore cowboy Sam Page.

Billman recounts the entire career, the scandals we've read about and partially misremembered, the iron grip on policy-making in the NC Senate, that paint a portrait of a stunning level of political corruption. And some new factoids I had previously missed:

The Assembly reported in August that, months after Illinois-based RedSpeed deposited $220,000 into House and Senate Republican coffers, lawmakers passed a bill that could make the company millions. The News & Observer reported in October that lawmakers spent $15 million to help a Mooresville developer after his politically connected project manager donated $132,000 to key lawmakers, including more than $17,000 to Berger. 

When you control as much as the Berger family controls, you're never satisfied. And it's like Phil Berger foresaw a time when he'd need to control the vote-counting process itself:

After the 2024 election, Republicans tucked a provision into a disaster recovery bill that transferred control of the state elections board from the Democratic governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor. 

The auditor, Dave Boliek, appointed the local and state officials who would oversee a recount. Boliek also endorsed and campaigned for Berger, and his chief of staff and spokesperson previously worked for Berger in the General Assembly. 

Boliek, a turn-coat Democrat, has already refused Sam Page's demand that he recuse himself from any recount process.

 

* If you're not a subscriber to The Assembly, what in the world is the matter with you?

 

The Perils of Phileen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dennis Draughon is on Bluesky. 

 

Phil Berger Plucks the Tasty Fruits of Corruption

 

Phil Berger did Donald Trump's bidding, re-gerrymandered US House District 1 to give a Republican a boost over Democrat Don Davis, thus delivering the bribe that compelled Trump to endorse Berger in his reelection run for Senate District 26. That endorsement came yesterday, and Berger celebrated it on his Twitter account.

But there was more to the deal. Trump also offered Berger's primary challenger, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, a Washington job in his administration, if he'll just drop out and let a very nervous Berger keep his seat.

Page was defiant (and can you even imagine that sheriff working a desk in DeeCee?). “I’m going to win this election,” Page said. Page posted a statement on social media that while he appreciated Trump’s “kind words and his offer to have me join him in Washington, [I am] committed to upholding conservative values here in North Carolina and ending the corruption and liberal policies Phil Berger has pushed for years. I will defeat Phil Berger on March 3.”

March 3rd will be Thunder Dome for hobgoblins, but Berger will win.

Berger-Hall to Josh Stein: "Pound Sand"

 

Photo Galen Bacharier, NC Newsline

Reportedly, in its last enacted budget Republican state lawmakers shorted the Medicaid program by around $319 million for the current fiscal year. As a result, Josh Stein's Health and Human Services (HHS) has resorted to cutting Medicaid reimbursements 3% to most hospitals and clinics (and up to 10-12% to "specialty providers"). Primary care doctors, dentists, community care clinics, nursing homes are all dependent on Medicaid funding. 

On Nov. 6, Governor Stein called a special session of the General Assembly for Nov. 17 to deal with that funding crisis. The state constitution gives the governor the power to summon lawmakers back to Raleigh to deal with emergencies (and you see where parsing that word will end up in court, right?). At a news conference, Stein said legislators had “failed North Carolina and the people of North Carolina” by not addressing the Medicaid shortfall during their October session -- which was largely devoted to once again redrawing the state’s congressional districts to add an extra Republican to Trump's tote board.

Yesterday, in a joint letter to Stein, House Speaker Destin Hall and Senate boss Phil Berger said they would not convene a session on Nov. 17, and claimed that Stein’s call for a special session "is constitutionally invalid and politically motivated."

Politically motivated. I certainly hope so!

Both chambers of the General Assembly are controlled completely by the GOP. Same party, but two equally immovable factions, fighting over the lucre. Leaders in both chambers have acknowledged the underfunding of Medicaid, and both chambers have written their own budget solutions in separate versions of a bill that was supposed to be blended and amended into a single unified budget law months ago. That didn't happen. There is no budget. North Carolina is now alone among all the fifty other states in the absence of one.

Berger-Hall

Can Berger-Hall just refuse to convene? You know it'll be litigated, and it'll be nobody's surprise when the current NC Supreme Court under Chief Justice Paul Newby rules for the General Assembly. Newby's going to love Berger-Hall's argument that Governor Stein's HHS made premature cuts to reimbursements as a means of exerting political pressure on the General Assembly. 

Josh Stein fired back at Berger-Hall: "The Republican majority has made the time to damage our democracy with their gerrymander. But when it comes time to protect people’s health care? When it comes time to enact a comprehensive budget? They’re on vacation, and they’ll see us next year. All while North Carolina families pay the price."

As far as I'm concerned, of course it's political, and it gives Stein the upper-hand here, the high ground, the advantage, because he is taking extraordinary action to stave off major damage to health care in North Carolina, while Berger-Hall just look like jerks, self-serving and out of touch with reality. So rather than asking, "Can they do that-- just refuse to come when summoned?" I should be asking the other question, "Why would they want to do that?" Because refusing to deal with the shortage of money that goes to help a whole community of need just helps build the bad, bad Republican brand of failing its own struggling MAGA base. 

Just a Few Months Distant -- The Most Important Republican Primary Race

 

Paul Specht just published on the WRAL site a very long and thorough introduction to everything Berger v. Page, the Republican primary next March which will determine whether The Notorious Phil Berger keeps his job as President Pro Tempore of the NC Senate or Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page ousts his ass once and for all. I would have to say that I'm rooting for the sheriff.

Apparently, the real prospect that the All Powerful Berger could be beat by a popular and upstanding opponent has apparently induced "third-party groups to set up websites and social media accounts to attack Page, while also launching ads that promote Berger," according to Specht. It's gotten personal and nasty, enough so that the Chair of the Rockingham County Republican Party, Diane Parnell, remarked to Specht, “I’ve never seen it this ugly.”

So we who have known the dirt on Berger for years are now learning dirt on Page, and for my money this is the worst revelation to come out of the Berger attack-dogs:

A dozen people have died in [the Rockingham Co.] jail since 2021, according to the Greensboro News & Record. Some of those deaths were by suicide. The family of one of the victims sued the county, claiming deputies were informed of their son’s mental issues but failed to take the proper precautions to ensure his safety. The family agreed to drop the lawsuit after a settlement. Last year, the county’s insurer informed commissioners that they would no longer cover the Rockingham County jail — a development covered by multiple media outlets.

County officials said their insurer, Travelers Insurance, dropped their detention center from its coverage because jail staff failed to report several incidents to the company.

That jail sounds like a black hole, administered by an authoritarian with limited fellow-feeling -- regardless of the sheriff's protestations to Specht that all those deaths -- 12 in the last 4 years! -- are nothing to do with conditions at the jail.

Corruption in Plain Sight

 

You may compare Phil Berger's newly drawn and carefully gerrymandered Congressional map for North Carolina with the current map. Only CD 1 (in purple) and CD 3 (beige) have changed. CD 1 changed drastically to satisfy Trump with another guaranteed Republican seat. (Berger's supposed to get something out of the deal, mainly a Trump endorsement for reelection against that pesky Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.) CD 1 is represented by Democrat Don Davis. Phil Berger's new gerrymander takes Davis from the 1% margin by which he won in 2024 to an almost 12% disadvantage for 2026 (based on how those counties voted when Trump was on the ballot). Don Davis beat the odds twice before, against twisted conservatives who should have won an R+2 district. Berger's new map adds insult by drawing Don Davis completely out of his own district.

Berger and the Boys swapped some relatively diverse and politically competitive counties that Davis represents, including Wilson and Wayne, for some more heavily conservative counties currently represented by Rep. Greg Murphy in CD 3, a Greenville Republican. Murphy's district would still favor Republican candidates but would be more competitive in the future.

The Berger-Page Republican Primary Got Ugly Fast

 

Check out the "Berger War Room" on X, billing itself as "the unofficial fan page and rapid response defender of NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and his reelection campaign." Whoever's writing it is making a career out of harassing rival candidate Sam Page, dogging him recently about the late filing of required reports about campaign money-raising -- "You got something to hide?" That was the taunt.

Pretty sinister, that. The fact is Sam Page has little to hide because he's raised so little campaign cash. He seems confident that what he has to offer the voters of Rockingham County is worth more than all Berger's million plus. What's he going to do with a big pile of money when everyone in Rockingham already knows him as a rock solid conservative and has known him for two decades in service as sheriff. If Page actually beats Berger for that NCSenate seat, it'll prove once again that you can't buy love.

Phil Berger, Fundraising Himself Right Out of the Senate?

 

Rockingham Co. Sheriff Sam Page

There's a North Carolina campaign report deadline next week, but Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger didn't wait. He was too proud to report a 6-month haul of $1.7 million in campaign cash. He's likely going to need a lot of that to get past Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page's primary challenge.

“Clearly he’s behaving as if he’s feeling pressure,” said Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political scientist who specializes in North Carolina politics. “He’s announcing endorsements well over a year before the primary. He’s been aggressive on social media going after Sam Page. He wouldn’t be doing that if Sam Page wasn't a threat.”

Meanwhile, Sheriff Page, who likes to sport a cowboy hat, has only a few thousand dollars in his campaign account and appears quite relaxed about it. Page is probably right about this: 

"This Senate race will not be won by the millions of dollars from big donors," he said. "Instead this Senate race will be won by the personal relationships that have been established for my more than 27 years while serving my community and my country as the Sheriff of Rockingham County."

If indeed Phil Berger's power palace in Raleigh has caused him to lose touch with his constituents, Sheriff Page's decades-long popularity in office will be a huge boost and perhaps enough to make Berger's millions a liability.

Trouble in Bergerland

 

According to Lucille Sherman and Jeffrey Billman, writing in Bryan Anderson's Caucus newsletter, Patrick Sebastian, a partner at the polling firm Opinion Diagnostics and a nephew of former Gov. Pat McCrory, has signed a memo reporting a poll that found Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page leading Phil Berger by some 18 points in next March's Republican primary for Berger's NC Senate seat. Sebastian had been behind similar polling in 2024 hypothetically testing Sam Page's political strength against Berger, but Page opted to run for lieutenant governor instead in the crowded 2024 primary. He came in 5th. But Page announced his candidacy for Berger's seat all the way back on Valentine's Day.

The undisputed boss of the NC General Assembly may be in trouble, but he has a huge war chest of cash. Sam Page, an ultra-hardliner on immigration, appears to be angling for Trump's endorsement.

Checking in on the Most Important Republican Primary of 2026

 

Why, of course I'm trying to follow the developing Republican primary between Phil Berger, paterfamilias to a whole tribe of power-wielders in Rockingham County and statewide and the absolute boss of the NC General Assembly, and current Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, who plays a cowboy-hat-wearing scourge of God. (I've written extensively about Sam Page, especially his crusade against Berger's sudden affection for gambling casinos. Use the search engine above.)

WXII in Winston did some pretty in-depth reporting on this race. Sam Page said that Berger had been in office too long, and he'd lost touch with the people he's supposed to be serving. Berger fired back and may have drawn blood:

"Yeah, so I think Sam Page is probably looking in the mirror," WXII quoted Berger. "He's been the sheriff of Rockingham County for over 20 years. It's no secret that he's spent the last seven or eight years at the border, focused more on things outside of the county. It's no secret that the jail in Rockingham county, because of his failure to look after the job he has now, has deteriorated to the point where insurance premiums for the county have gone through the roof." WXII found out, indeed, that insurance premiums at the jail had increased by 118% and the deductible went up by a factor of 20. That doesn't sound good.

Berger's in trouble for the first time in his career. Really in trouble. He alienated many -- Berger Senior along with his other son Kevin, who runs the Rockingham County Commission -- with manipulations and machinations the Berger junta pursued to get a gambling casino into Rockingham. The strait-laced sheriff Page led the opposition like an angry apostle of the Lord. Sam Page has been reelected six or seven times and is said (by everyone) to be "very popular." Berger's going to do what he can to tarnish that.

Berger runs a machine, a powerful machine that can occasionally get its gears shredded. I don't know how mean the super pious Sam Page is willing to become, but it's going to take mean to defeat Phil Berger.

Phil Berger Sends a Panicked Message to NC's Chief Justice

 

First reporter who got this out appears to have been Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts on Substack is required reading). 

Mr. Chief Justice

Looks like Phil Berger knows just how destructive to Republican rule, going forward, and to the entire North Carolina judicial system, how utterly destructive a Paul Newby Supreme Court ruling in Jefferson Griffin's favor would be, giving him that lusted-for seat on the Court in the most cynical way. So, speaking to the press two days ago, Phil Berger sent a message to our Rumplestiltskin Chief Justice: Don't do it, you dolt! Even though his comment singled out Jefferson Griffin and not Newby, any fool can see that Berger's real concern is the naked and crazy partisanship of the little man at the top of the Court who has already said publicly that he likes Griffin's chances.

In a rare public rebuke of a fellow Republican, GOP Senate leader Phil Berger on Tuesday suggested Griffin’s effort to remove voters over clerical issues was a bridge too far.

“The equities are with the voters there,” Berger told reporters on Tuesday. “I don’t think that they had a way of knowing that that was a deficiency as far as their registration is concerned."

Question remains: Will Newby get the message? Certainly, Jefferson Griffin has already shown he's not letting up, so it falls on the conservative super-majority on the NC Supremes to save the NCGOP from itself.

 

Phil Berger: "You'll Not Hear Any More About Gambling Casinos Out of Me"

 

Phil Berger -- who tried to sneak four new private industry gambling casinos into rural North Carolina, while his own son who's chair of the Rockingham County Commission was rushing through a rezoning of some prime property already picked out for the Rockingham casino -- Berger got his ears pinned back on that deal. A hardcore group of Puritans in the NC House said no way, and the popular sheriff of Rockingham, Sam Page, led a protest of hometown Rockingham Republicans to Raleigh to denounce Berger's scheme in front of the legislative building. Page is now running against Berger in next March's Republican primary.

What's the saying? Once bitten, twice shy.

When News and Observer reporter Avi Bajpai asked Berger if casino legislation could be revisited this year, "Berger said he isn’t working on it, nor is he aware of any other lawmakers planning to introduce legislation on it." “I don’t think it’s something that will see the light of day as far as the legislative session we’re in,” Berger said.

Just a week ago Berger was telling the NandO's Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan that he saw no reason to talk yet about his plans for 2026 -- “I don't want to prejudge any decision that really doesn’t have to be made until later in the year,” he said -- but then Sam Page made a splash with his announcement that he intended to take out Phil Berger in the next election. Suddenly Phil Berger was announcing his plans to run for reelection. 

“My intent has been, all along, to run again, and I felt that the appropriate thing would be to make the announcement of that closer to the filing period [December],” Berger told reporters. “But, you know, I intend to run, I intend to continue to be the senator from the 26th district.”

Sounds nervous to me.

Should Rockingham Co. Elect the Self-Righteous Over the Self-Interested?

 

BusinessNC.com interviewed Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, the man who says he intends to kick Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger to the curb in next March's Republican primary. What motivates Sam Page, BusinessNC wanted to know.

Gambling casinos -- first thing out of Page's mouth. Gambling casinos, one of them specially designed for Rockingham County in backrooms by Phil Berger and other members of his dynastic family, a power move by a man many considered unassailable, which outraged the massively self-righteous chief law enforcement officer for the county.

In fact, and reading between the lines, Page is mainly prompted to action against Berger by a Captain America self-image of standing up against big men with low morals. That's potent stuff. Phil Berger has heaps too much power and needs to be beaten down a peg or two. Who better than a sheriff to do it?

But did I say self-righteous? What also emerged in that BusinessNC interview is the cold heartedness that often undergirds self-righteousness -- Page's dismissal of the poor, because the second plausible reason he gave for primarying the big man was Berger's caving to Roy Cooper to extend Medicaid insurance coverage to some 600,000 North Carolinians who need it. That's a motivation for running for office? Seriously? The desire to make life harder for a whole bunch of people. 

That's as trumpist as it gets.