Ricky Brinkley, a 65-year-old Democrat, is a retired truck driver working in his daughter's beauty supply store in Nashville, N.C., March 11, 2026. Brinkley says he votes in every presidential election but not all midterms — and never hears directly from candidates for high office. Voters like Brinkley will be critical to Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper's campaign this fall. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)

Pastor James Gailliard discusses his North Carolina state Senate campaign in his office at his Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount, N.C., March 11, 2026. Gailliard is critical of how little national Democratic Party donors and organizations have invested in eastern North Carolina where rural Black voters are critical to election outcomes. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)

Commerce Street, in the small rural community of Powellsville, N.C., in the majority Black Bertie County, seen in this March 12, 2026, photo, leads to the one downtown stoplight in Powellsville, N.C. Towns like this in eastern North Carolina add up at election time, and rural Black voters especially are critical to election outcomes in the state. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)

Damion Farrow, 49, who works for a contract security firm, speaking from his hometown of Powellsville, N.C., on March 12, 2026, says he hears from Democratic political campaigns only at election time. But he's been a reliable Democratic voter anyway, he says. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)

FILE - A monolith listing the names, dates and rationale for the lynching of African-American residents rests in the foreground of a photograph of a burning Ku Klux Klan cross on display in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss, Nov. 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, file)