It’s On !!! (Berger & Page file for marquee March showdown. )
I can imagine it’s rare for multiple TV cameras to show up at a rural elections office to cover the opening of the electoral filing period. But – in Rockingham County — THIS is no ordinary election cycle.
Longtime incumbent sheriff Sam Page (R) is seeking to unseat longtime state senator Phil Berger (R), the upper chamber’s president pro tem and arguably the “boss” of the NCGOP’s Raleigh operations.
Both Page and Berger are well known to folks in this part of the state. They’ve both been in public office and in the news for decades. There are not likely many voters out there who are undecided on these two.
The senate district is safe Republican. The winner of this primary face-off will likely be off to Raleigh for a full term in the legislature.
Page’s move has set off a lot of alarm bells in Raleigh. Berger has done a great job of getting a lot of cronies and special interests onto the state government gravy train. Many see that “cash flow” being at-risk if Berger gets replaced by Page.
It’s as one longtime local political observer pointed out to me:
“People are asking ‘Why does the sheriff want this’? Why is he making this move? The real question people need to ask is why these dark money folks have spent more than two million dollars promoting Phil Berger and trashing Sam Page before anyone had even filed for this senate seat.”
The Page campaign has pointed out Berger’s conservative talk at home which has been used to mask liberal sell-outs in Raleigh. Berger’s cooperation with Democrat Roy Cooper in expanding Medicaid and killing the HB2 bathroom bill are two frequently cited examples. We’ve also heard about Berger’s team-up with gambling interests for proposed hotly-disputed casinos in Rockingham and four other counties.
And there have also been rumblings about Berger’s refusal to go along with more conservative spending proposals from the House. The state budget is currently four months overdue thanks to one of those disagreements between Berger and the GOP-controlled House.
Page is being hit by Berger allies about perceived problems at the sheriff’s department and at the county jail. Though, he’s been overwhelmingly reelected by the county’s voters for seven four-year terms. Kevin Berger, son of Page’s opponent, is chairman of the county commissioners for Rockingham County. The younger Berger didn’t have a whole lot to say about Page’s performance until word started surfacing that Page might run against his dad.
All in all, this state senate race – in a district encompassing all of Rockingham County and portions of Guilford County — stands to surpass the *bigger* statewide Senate race in the 2026 cycle. In terms of public interest and money spent.
It WILL have a huge impact on how business is done in Raleigh.
While Berger is playing defense in Rockingham County, he is simultaneously trying to take down the Freedom Caucus in the House. Liberal establishment Republican Jimmy Dixon is conniving with Berger on that. Berger and Dixon are sponsoring primary challengers to the six leaders of the House Freedom Caucus, and have put out the word that they intend to spend $4 million to defeat them.
Berger is sore that House conservatives have blocked some of his liberal special interest legislation like his casino bill and his bill to do a solid for radical environmentalists by putting commercial fishermen out of business. Dixon is miffed because House conservatives blocked his efforts to put the farmers who supply raw milk out of business and to protect big out of state chemical corporations from lawsuits by NC farmers. As Ag Committee chairman, Dixon was in cahoots with the special interests to the extent he tried to screw NC farmers two different ways. It was House conservatives who protected NC farmers from Dixon’s machinations.