State Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, perhaps the most powerful North Carolina politician, is pulling out all the stops to win his first primary election in 14 years.
Despite Berger raising 63 times as much money as his opponent, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, and securing a rare state legislative endorsement from President Donald Trump, the race remains a toss-up in the eyes of political watchers.
Limited polling includes small sample sizes and wide margins of error that don’t give either candidate a clear, consistent advantage in the contest for the state Senate District 26 seat, which covers Rockingham County and part of Guilford County.
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Funders of negative campaign ads and mailers sent on behalf of Berger and Page are also obscured behind several layers of campaign finance committees.
Berger has been in charge of the Senate Republicans for 16 years, making him one of the nation’s longest-serving state senate leaders. In that time, he’s maintained caucus loyalty with an iron grip. If Berger loses, he will leave behind a massive leadership vacuum in the North Carolina General Assembly.
Trump ties and gambling
It’s not every day that Page gets a call from the president. It’s even rarer to have to tell the president no, which is what the longtime sheriff did when Trump offered him a job at the White House in exchange for dropping out of the Republican primary.
“I said, ‘I appreciate it, but I’ve committed,’” Page said in an interview with Carolina Public Press. “I’ve given my word, and I have stayed the course.”
Trump endorsed Berger in December 2025 with a post on Truth Social. He credited Berger with helping him win the past three presidential elections in North Carolina, cutting taxes and regulation, championing school choice policy, maintaining a secure border and protecting the Second Amendment.
“HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN,” Trump wrote.
Page was surprised the president got involved in a state legislative race. In fact, Page believes Berger led mid-decade redistricting efforts in order to curry favor with Trump so that he would endorse him. There is no evidence of such a quid pro quo, which Berger has denied.
Page also doesn’t agree with Trump on this particular issue; Page thinks Berger has continuously let his constituents down.
First and foremost, Berger unsuccessfully pushed legislation legalizing casinos and video lottery terminals as part of the 2023 budget. Berger’s plan was to place casinos in economically disadvantaged Rockingham, Nash and Anson counties, with a fourth casino to be located somewhere in southeastern North Carolina.
Page didn’t approve of the way Berger handled the effort, and is generally unsupportive of gambling.
“It was a secret for a long time, and the way it was sprung on the citizens about what they wanted to bring to Rockingham County, it offended and upset a lot of people,” he said.
That’s still on voters’ minds, he added.
Page is also keeping a mental tally: the number of days North Carolinians have gone without a budget. Right now, the clock is at 241 days. The dispute lies between House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, and Berger over two main issues: a children’s hospital and tax policy.
Hall wants a budget without funding for a standalone children’s hospital and that will also pause individual tax rate cuts for the time being; Berger is insistent on children’s hospital funding and continued drops in the individual income tax rate. He’s told reporters previously that the former House Speaker, Tim Moore, promised the hospital funding and Hall reneged on the deal.
The pair have been at a stalemate for months. Page said he’s on Hall’s side. He thinks the state has enough children’s hospitals, and would prefer a regional mental health in-patient facility. He also wants to take a more cautious approach to tax policy.
“Now, I do believe in cutting taxes, but if you cut taxes where you don’t have the revenue, then you’re gonna have to seek out other sources of revenue,” Page said. “But I don’t think gaming, gambling, those types of predatory businesses, is a direction that we should go.”
Money talks for Berger, mostly through attack ads
In true Trump style, the first negative campaign ad released against Page assigned him a new nickname: Shady Sam.
The ad claimed that Page spent more than $50,000 of taxpayer money to go on beach vacations. Page countered that the trips were for sheriff conventions across the country.
Another ad painted “Shady Sam” as an incompetent sheriff. It highlighted recent Rockingham County Jail headlines, including stories about several officers accused of wrongdoing, deaths from drug overdoses, Page’s loss of liability insurance and an ongoing investigation of the jail by the State Bureau of Investigation.
Both ads were paid for by NC True Conservatives, a third-party group that is not in communication with Berger but was organized last September to support his reelection campaign. According to State Board of Elections records, the group had spent $2.78 million to support Berger with advertisements and mailers by the end of 2025.
NC True Conservatives is backed by Citizens for a Better NC and the Good Government Coalition INC, which in turn get their money from national Republican organizations GOPAC and Republican State Leadership Committee. According to an analysis by campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall, about 90% of contributions to GOPAC and RSLC are from corporations and trade associations, including top donors like tobacco giant Reynolds America and Altria, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy.
Berger’s direct campaign backers, who had given him $2.4 million as of the end of 2025, include dozens of political action committees donating the maximum $6,800 individual contribution. They include political action committees associated with tobacco and alcohol, health care and pharmaceuticals, construction and commerce. In all, Berger received 216 maximum donations by the end of 2025.
In contrast, Page received one, from Stokesdale resident Shaun Hall. He also got high-dollar donations from former North Carolina GOP vice chair Miriam Chu and her husband, Rockingham County Commissioner Jeff Kallam, North Carolina Fisheries Association chairman Brent Fulcher and Judy Carter, regional captain of the North Carolina Convention of States chapter.
In total, Page had $38,118 in his campaign coffers by the end of 2025, a paltry sum compared to Berger.
However, newly formed NC Families for Prosperity and NC Partnership for Good Government, as well as Piedmont Accountability Coalition, have advocated on Page’s behalf. Little is known about their donors.
Berger has indicated that some of their donors may be Democrats. At a February candidate forum in Rockingham County, Berger said the Democrats want Page to win because Berger’s a highly effective conservative leader.
“I helped orchestrate, plan and lead the Republican takeover of the General Assembly in 2010,” Berger said. “Since then, I’ve fought every conservative battle there is and come out on top. Democrats would love to take me out so that they can drag our state back to a bygone era of government overreach, and they’re using Sam Page and his campaign to do so.”
How Page could win
When Page joined the Rockingham County sheriff’s office in 1981, the agency had one computer. Since then, the world has changed, but he has remained a steady presence in the county. During his 44 years in law enforcement and 28 years as sheriff, Page said he’s built relationships and trust.
“I’m not going to be able to match the corporate, dark money interests supporting Phil Berger,” he said. “But what I’m going to be able to do is I’m going to win this because I’ve built relationships with citizens that I serve, building that trust. People know Sam Page.”
Page doesn’t have the air of a downtrodden candidate hoping to put up a decent fight. He has the confidence of someone who’s sure he will win.
If he’s elected, Page wants to repeal the law shielding legislators from public record laws, institute leadership term limits and put school resource officers in every school, to start.
At the Rockingham County forum, Berger said voters should look at his record. He’s helped recruit companies like Purina and Ruger in Rockingham County, and Jet Zero and Boom Supersonic in Guilford County. He’s cut taxes nearly in half. He’s guided his Republican caucus on parental rights, education, immigration and Second Amendment issues. He’s brought millions of dollars back to the district in the form of infrastructure upgrades and community group support. And, not to forget, he’s secured Trump’s endorsement.
Page isn’t impressed. Why, with all the money Berger’s brought back, is Rockingham County still categorized as an economically distressed Tier 1 county, he asked. From his perspective, the district has lost jobs and companies, which has led to long commutes and brain drain.
Page said he would switch things up, both in the district and in the state legislature. He hears that in the legislature, it’s Berger’s way or the highway. If he wins, he would “reboot the Senate,” he said.
“Instead of having to listen to one man, one person, one leader and fall in line, they have the ability to stand on their own two feet and represent their citizens as they were elected to do,” he said.
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