North Carolina has been a traditional stronghold of Republicans where the former US President Donald Trump won both in 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

But with 2022 midterm elections approaching, Republicans are looking to replace retiring Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican senator and a staunch Trump critic, in a bid to regain majority in the Congress.

Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, on Monday said the former US president will chair the state’s Republican convention on June 5, as a rebuff to Burr.

“We are honored to welcome President Trump to our convention as the Republican Party launches our campaign to retake Congress and the Senate in the 2022 midterms,” he said in a statement.

Burr, the outgoing US senator from North Carolina, was reprimanded by fellow Republicans in the state after he chose to be one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump of inciting a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6.

After the Senate vote in February, Burr released a strongly-worded statement, terming January 6 a “grim day” in his country’s history.

“The attack on the U.S. Capitol was an attempt to undermine our democratic institutions and overrule the will of the American people through violence, intimidation, and force,” he remarked.

He accused Trump of “promoting unfounded conspiracy theories” and said the former president directed his supporters to go to the Capitol to disrupt the lawful proceedings required by the Constitution on that day.

Pertinently, Lara Trump, wife of the former US president’s son, Eric Trump, has been rumored to be one of likely contenders to replace Burr.

“In North Carolina, in particular, she’s a household name and people know her. She worked really hard on the campaign and was very involved in a lot of decisions throughout,” Trump campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp told the New York Times late last year.

It comes days after the Republican politician from Wyoming Liz Cheney was voted out of House Republican leadership over her strong criticism of Trump and his unfounded claims of election fraud.

She is reportedly planning to challenge the former president for ideological dominance of the GOP.

In an interview on ABC on Monday, Cheney said she would do “everything necessary to make sure he (Trump) never gets anywhere close to the Oval Office again”.

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Both CNN and ABC projected Biden would win as polls closed at 7:30 p.m. ET. His victory in the state could give his campaign a boost, providing him his second win of the night after Virginia, following disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire last month.

The vote in North Carolina has yet to be counted. The results were delayed slightly after the state’s board of elections extended voting hours in a single precinct in Winston-Salem due to a ballot shortage.

But exit polls indicated that Biden was poised to win the state by a clear margin.

Biden’s victories in North Carolina and Virginia provided an early sign of momentum for the former vice president in the South. He’s also the favorite to win in Alabama, given his strength among black voters, who are expected to make up more than half the state’s Democratic electorate, The Hill reported.

North Carolina is a significant win for Biden. The state has 110 pledged delegates up for grabs on Tuesday. It’s still unclear exactly how many of those he will be awarded.

His win in the Tar Heel State is also likely to help Biden bolster his argument that he’s the candidate capable of building the most diverse coalition of voters. In 2016, black voters made up about one-third of the Democratic electorate in North Carolina.

Biden has emerged as the clearest challenger to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) after he scored a major victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

Following that win, two of Biden’s moderate rivals, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), dropped out of the race and threw their support behind the former vice president.

Sanders, the standard-bearer for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, emerged as the primary field’s nominal front-runner last month after scoring back-to-back wins in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses. He’s hoping to extend his delegate lead on Tuesday night with an expected victory in the California primary and a potential win in Texas.

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