RALEIGH, N.C. — The primary election is coming up fast, and there will be several competitive races for the North Carolina House and Senate.

All 120 House seats and all 50 Senate seats are on the ballot, and in many deep-red or deep-blue districts, the March primary is the only opportunity for a competitive race.

This year, there are seven contested primaries — races where more than one candidate from the same party is running for the same seat — in the state Senate, all on the Republican side.

In the state House, there are 23 competitive primaries, including 15 among Republicans and eight among Democrats, according to North Carolina State Board of Elections data from Monday analyzed by The News & Observer.

Candidate filing continues through Dec. 19, so more candidates may enter and additional competitive primaries could emerge. Winners will advance to the general election in November.

Senate primaries

Perhaps the most high-profile legislative primary next year is the matchup between Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.

Since first winning his Senate seat in 2000, Berger has maintained a strong hold on power and has largely not faced serious competition for his seat.

But he and Page have not seen eye to eye for years. Tensions escalated in 2023 when Berger backed a plan to bring casino gambling to four sites across the state — including one in Rockingham County. The proposal drew strong local opposition, and Page became one of its most outspoken critics. He said then he was considering a run but ultimately held off, choosing instead to run unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor. This year, however, he announced in February that he would challenge Berger in the GOP primary.

Another noteworthy Senate primary is the matchup between Republican Sen. Chris Measmer and former Rep. Kevin Crutchfield. Measmer was appointed to represent Senate District 34 — the seat at play, representing Cabarrus County — after former Senate Majority Leader Paul Newton retired from the legislature in March for a job at UNC–Chapel Hill. Crutchfield lost his reelection bid two years ago to challenger Brian Echevarria for the House District 82 seat.

Also facing primary challenges are two influential Republican senators who help shape health funding and policy: Sen. Benton Sawrey and Sen. Jim Burgin, who both chair the committees on health and human services appropriations and on health care.

Longtime Sen. Tom McInnis, a Pinehurst Republican, has also drawn a challenge. Ray Daly, who is running against him, criticizes McInnis on his website for supporting horse-racing wagering and for backing a controversial ban on shrimp trawling that failed to pass earlier year.

House primaries

While Republicans face more primary challenges, a few significant challenges to Democratic incumbents have also emerged — including for lawmakers who have faced primary opponents before. Last year, Reps. Cecil Brockman, Michael Wray, Shelly Willingham, Garland Pierce and Carla Cunningham drew the ire of the Young Democrats of North Carolina — the official youth arm of the North Carolina Democratic Party — for joining Republicans in voting for the GOP budget. Former longtime Rep. Michael Woodard also faced a primary last year after he was criticized for voting three times to override then-Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto on noncontroversial bills dealing with sales tax and the Consumer Finance Act. Of that group, Woodard and Wray lost their primaries. Brockman narrowly survived but resigned this year after facing charges for alleged sex crimes involving a minor. Wray, after losing his seat, is now mounting a challenge to Rep. Rodney Pierce, the Democrat who unseated him.

The race has been heating up: Wray recently asked Republicans in his northeastern North Carolina district to switch their party affiliation so they can vote for him in next year’s primary, and Pierce responded with a post on X, saying, “This is not surprising — my opponent has been misleading voters for years.”

Democratic Sen. Graig Meyer also alleged in a Substack post that when he was first appointed to the General Assembly, Wray pulled him aside following a event featuring then-President Barack Obama and said “‘watch out for the Blacks’” in the Democratic caucus. Former Democratic state Rep. Raymond Smith Jr. replied to the post saying he’d had a similar encounter, in which Wray told him he thought “’Whites should marry Whites and Blacks should marry Blacks.’” The N&O has reached out to Wray for comment; he denied Meyer’s claim to the Assembly.

Cunningham is again facing a primary in Mecklenburg County’s House District 106, this time from Rodney Sadler. Her challenge comes after she drew sharp criticism from fellow Democrats for a fiery floor speech and for helping Republicans override Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s veto of a contentious immigration enforcement bill, The N&O previously reported. That backlash included statements from the Young Democrats.

Another Democratic primary to watch is in District 37 — which includes parts of Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs — between Marcus Gadson and Winn Decker. The seat is currently held by Erin Paré, a Holly Springs Republican, who is an appropriations chair and an influential figure in the General Assembly. She is one of only two Republican lawmakers representing Wake County in either chamber.

The other Republican representing Wake County is Rep. Mike Schietzelt, who is facing a primary challenge from Michele Joyner-Dinwiddie. Joyner-Dinwiddie is a public-school teacher and part of a group of educators who have filed to run in this primary, The Assembly reported.

Influential Republicans are also facing primaries in the House. Rep. Jimmy Dixon, an eight-term lawmaker who serves as the senior chair of the Agriculture and Environment Committee and a budget subcommittee that deals with the same issues, has drawn a challenge from Marcella Barbour.

Rep. Donna McDowell White, the chair of the Health Committee and the budget subcommittee on health and human services, is facing a primary challenge from Margie Beth Riedel.

And Rep. Keith Kidwell — one of the chamber’s most conservative members — has drawn a challenge from Darren Armstrong for House District 79.

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