Eyes On the Court of Appeals Races

Last month, Allison Riggs described Democrats’ four-year plan to retake the Republican-led state Supreme Court as a game of dominoes. Riggs’ effort this year to keep her seat on the bench is the first domino; without her, there’d be just one Democrat left on the state’s highest court.

Democrats are also fighting to reverse the trend in the North Carolina Court of Appeals races, where three of 15 seats are up for election this fall. Republicans currently hold an 11-4 majority on the state’s intermediate appellate court, where most appeals from local court cases are heard. 

Two incumbents, one Democrat and one Republican, are vying to keep their seats, while a Republican and Democrat are challenging each other for a third open seat. If Democrats win all three seats this November, the Republican majority shrinks to 9-6. 

Court of Appeals judges serve eight-year terms and decide cases in three-judge panels. This election is coming during a growing trend of increased polarization of state appellate courts. That has only been exacerbated with the General Assembly’s decision to make nonpartisan statewide judicial races partisan, starting in 2018. 

Here’s what to know about these three races.

Carolyn Thompson (D) vs. Tom Murry (R)

Carolyn Thompson, 56, was appointed in September 2023 by Gov. Roy Cooper to replace Riggs on the Court of Appeals. The Democrat had previously run for the Court of Appeals in 2022, losing in a close race to current Republican Judge Julee Flood, whose term ends in 2031. 

Thompson is a graduate of N.C. Central University School of Law and worked as a trial attorney for 13 years before running for a district judicial seat that covered Granville, Franklin, Vance, Person and Warren counties in 2008. Cooper later appointed her to a superior judicial seat. 

After Thompson’s 2022 defeat, Cooper appointed her as a deputy commissioner on the North Carolina Industrial Commission. She has said she believes in equal justice and would work to apply the law to the facts, regardless of political party or ideology. 

Her opponent is Tom Murry, 47, an assistant district attorney in Franklin, Granville, Person, Vance, and Warren counties as well as a trained pharmacist. Murry has been chief of staff for the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts, working with Republican Chief Justice Mark Martin, from 2014 until 2019. He previously served in the Army National Guard as a judge advocate officer and was deployed for a year to the Middle East. 

Murry received his law degree from Campbell University and served four years as a state house representative for Wake County for the General Assembly. He initially filed to run for attorney general this year but dropped out, endorsed fellow candidate U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, and instead ran for the Court of Appeals. 

On his website, he describes himself as a “common-sense conservative” who pledges to uphold the state constitution. He also sponsored the controversial 2013 Voter ID law, which the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals struck down after concluding legislators had discriminatory intent in passing it.

Valerie Zachary (R) vs. Ed Eldred (D)

Valerie Zachary, 62, is the Republican incumbent in this race. Former Gov. Pat McCrory appointed her to a seat on the Court of Appeals in 2015 and she won reelection in 2016. Zachary lives in Yadkin County with her husband, former state Rep. Lee Zachary. 

She touts a long legal career, starting with obtaining her law degree from Harvard University and working as a research assistant for Professor Laurence Tribe. After she graduated, she joined a Charlotte law firm and then moved to Yadkin, where she worked at her husband’s law firm for 26 years until her appointment. 

She has served on the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission since 2017. On her campaign website, she said she has consistently applied the state Constitution to the facts of a case and has never engaged in what she calls “judicial activism.” 

Ed Eldred, 51, is the Democrat challenging her seat. He is a UNC-Chapel Hill law graduate who has worked as a trial and appellate attorney, working in both state and federal courts. He also has clerked for the Court of Appeals. 

This is his first time running for political office. But he says his experience gives him a particular perspective currently missing on the court. 

“I am an appellate attorney,” Eldred said at a September 11 event hosted by the state Democratic Party. “I’ve represented about 300 people in our state courts, most of them in the area of indigent defense, which is an overwhelming majority of what the Court of Appeals does. … I think I’m going to bring a level of practical experience to help the other judges understand what actually goes on in those cases.”

Chris Freeman (R) vs. Martin Moore (D)

Republican Chris Freeman defeated incumbent Judge Hunter Murphy in the March primary, after the latter faced backlash last year for authoring an opinion stating North Carolina has “long held that ‘the life of a human being begins at the moment of conception in the mother’s womb.’” 

Legal experts called the ruling an example of conservative judicial activism and said it was rooted in the idea of fetal personhood often used by anti-abortion advocates. The ruling was later withdrawn and reissued, eliminating the “life begins at conception” language. 

Freeman, 46, is a former Rockingham County prosecutor who now serves as a district court judge in Rockingham and Caswell counties. He is also an Air Force reservist and got his law degree from Regent University, a Christian school founded by the late Pat Robertson. On his website, he said he was inspired by the school’s motto: “Christian leadership to change the world.” 

Freeman says on his website that he is a conservative judge who defends the constitution and enforces the law “as written.” 

His opponent, Martin Moore, 36, currently sits on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law, he worked as a public defender before establishing his mediation and appellate law practice. On his website, he says he was the only Democrat in 2022 to flip a commissioner seat, beating Republican incumbent and NASCAR Hall of Fame member Robert Pressley. 

He, like Thompson, has said he built his campaign around ensuring equal justice. 

In-person early voting begins October 17 and runs through November 2. Election Day is November 5. 

Correction: The justice Tom Murry clerked for and the counties where he served as DA have been corrected. Also, due to an error in the Associated Press’s labeling system, a file image that was not Murry has been removed.