RALEIGH, N.C. — Justice Anita Earls won another eight-year term on the North Carolina Supreme Court on Tuesday, and Democrats captured all three Court of Appeals seats on the statewide ballot.
With every precinct in, unofficial state returns gave Earls about 59% of the vote to roughly 41% for Republican Sarah Stevens. Stevens, a family law attorney for more than three decades, represented Surry County in the state House from 2009 until this year and was speaker pro tempore from 2017 to 2025. She ran on judicial restraint and faulted Earls’s past opinions on redistricting and voter ID.
The result leaves the high court’s 5-2 Republican majority in place. Earls, a justice since 2019 and a civil rights lawyer before that, remains one of the court’s two Democrats and its lone Black member. Former President Barack Obama endorsed her in the closing weeks of the race.
The bigger test comes in 2028, when three seats now held by Republicans go before voters. Democrats would need to win two of them to regain the majority they lost in 2022, ahead of the redistricting fights that follow the 2030 Census. The court’s partisan makeup has repeatedly decided whether legislative and congressional maps stand.
On the 15-judge Court of Appeals, which hears cases in rotating three-judge panels, Democratic Judge John Arrowood of Charlotte beat Republican Michael Byrne, an administrative law judge from Cary, about 57% to 42%. Democratic Judge Toby Hampson of Raleigh defeated Mecklenburg County Superior Court Judge George Cooper Bell, 57% to 43%.
For the open seat left by retiring Judge Allegra Collins, Wake County District Court Judge Christine Walczyk, a Democrat, topped Gaston County Superior Court Judge Craig Collins, a Republican, by the same 57-43 margin.
Counties are still counting provisional ballots and military and overseas ballots, which may arrive until 5 p.m. Nov. 12. County election boards are scheduled to certify results Nov. 13.
Section: More Asheville NC politics news
Filed under: Asheville NC Politics News
