RALEIGH — The race for North Carolina’s State Supreme Court seat is headed to a recount after the vote came down to less than a 1% margin, which is the threshold to trigger a recount.
Throughout the night, Democrat incumbent and gubernatorial appointee Associate Justice Allison Riggs and Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin traded spots in the lead, albeit with razor thin margins.
While results are still unofficial, Griffin was ahead of Riggs by just 0.18%, or 9,851 votes, when ballot uploads were finished on election night.
Griffin, 43, won his seat on the N.C. Court of Appeals in 2020. He faced an uphill battle during the 2020 cycle on two fronts: the pandemic and being deployed as a member of the North Carolina National Guard.
He first sought a seat on the Court of Appeals in 2018, losing to Democrat Tobias Hampson.
Republicans swept the state’s top judicial races in both the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.
In a 2020 interview with North State Journal, Griffin described his legal philosophy as an “originalist and a textualist.”
“I believe that the document should be viewed through the lens as when it was written, and a textualist in that I believe that the document speaks for itself — the four corners of the document,” Griffin said.
Griffin’s rank of captain in the North Carolina Army National Guard is paired with serving as a JAG officer in the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team, often referred to as “Old Hickory.” The battalion was deployed to the Middle East from 2019 to 2020.
Griffin earned his law degree from North Carolina Central School of Law in 2008 and practiced civil and criminal defense litigation in the Kinston area before joining the Wake County District Attorney’s Office in 2010. He received his undergraduate degree from UNC Chapel Hill.
In 2015, former Gov. Pat McCrory appointed Griffin as a district court judge in Wake County. He ran for the seat in 2016 and was elected to a four-year term.
Riggs, 43, was appointed to her role on the Supreme Court by Gov. Roy Cooper in September 2023 to replace Associate Justice Michael Morgan, who left to run unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary race for governor. The appointment made her the youngest woman ever to serve on the high court.
Riggs was the least-tenured member of the Court of Appeals at the time Cooper elevated her to the Supreme Court. Cooper had only appointed Riggs to the Court of Appeals in mid-December 2022.
At the time of her appointment to the Court of Appeals, Riggs was working as a litigator with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), an outfit known for suing the state over elections laws. At SCSJ, Riggs worked under Anita Earls, who successfully ran for the state’s Supreme Court in 2018.
Both Riggs and Earls had the backing of former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, who now runs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Riggs obtained her undergraduate and her law degree from the University of Florida.
During her campaign, Riggs ran ads that seemed to imply she would “fight” for abortion rights despite Judicial Code of Conduct standards that says judges should refrain from bias or predisposition on issues that may come before the court. The ads resulted in three lawmakers filing an ethics complaint against Riggs.
When asked about Riggs’ ads, the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts referred North State Journal to a 2022 memo on political conduct for judges.
One section of the 2022 memo addresses political campaign ads and lists certain activities that violate the Code of Judicial Conduct, such as materials suggesting “a judge’s bias or predisposition for or against certain litigants, or that would create a reasonable suggestion that a judge would show favor toward a particular side in a legal dispute.”
The ads also attacked Griffin, claiming if an abortion ban was enacted by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, “my opponent could decide if his ban becomes law.”
One of the prohibited activities in the 2022 memo is an “intentional and knowingly false representation about an opponent.”
North State Journal asked the Riggs campaign for comment on the ads and were referred to attorney Press Millen, who in an email response said the campaign had “no comment at this time.” Millen is the husband of N.C. State Board of Elections board member Siobhan Millen.
