The future of North Carolina’s political power lies in the hands of voters in a rural county of small towns on the border with Virginia.

Coming up the hill into the city of Eden, drivers see longtime Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page on one side of a billboard.

Driving down the hill from Eden, they see longtime state Sen. Phil Berger on the opposite side of the same billboard.

A short distance away, there’s another billboard, this one featuring both Berger and President Donald Trump, who endorsed Berger. But in his Berger endorsement, Trump also praised Page.

Attack ads, both video and print mailers, show a race that voters say has been contentious. As both candidates try to win over Republican primary voters in Rockingham and Guilford counties, Page is being attacked for problems at the local sheriff’s office, while Berger is being criticized for becoming too much of a Raleigh insider. Outside money is driving the drama, because a lot is at stake. In his role as the most powerful lawmaker in North Carolina, Berger has significant control over the future of state law.

But at the voting booth, a different picture emerges.

Republican voters in their home county of Rockingham know both men — and have for decades — and many of them like them both. They talk about them as just “Sam” and “Phil.”

Like Trump, they might prefer one of them over the other, and that’s the unknown factor with just days until the primary election.

Here’s what Page and Berger voters are saying about why each man got their vote, and how this race is shaped by Rockingham County politics.

Page’s community connections

Tracey Barber of Reidsville held a Page sign at the Reidsville early-voting site. The sheriff has “proven leadership,” she told The N&O on a windy Friday afternoon with more than a week left to go in early voting. Barber is a Girl Scout troop leader, and Page has spoken with her troop.

“I’ve known him about 25 years,” she said. She met Berger only one day prior at the voting site, she said, adding that she doesn’t have anything against him.

That echoed what many people at the polls in Rockingham County are saying: They have a preferred candidate, but are voting for one candidate rather than just against the other.

Because of that, several people who spoke with The N&O were reluctant to be quoted. After the primary, they’ll still live in Rockingham County, and Page and Berger do, too. And they’re all Republicans.

The Reidsville early voting site, in a shopping center next to a Belk, is one of four sites in the county. District 26 also includes northern Guilford County, though not Greensboro, which is represented in the Senate by two Democrats.

Asked about Rockingham County issues, Barber is concerned about drugs, and said as sheriff, Page “puts people’s safety first.”

Barber has seen attack ads against Page that are funded by political action committees that support Berger.

“I think a lot of people have gotten upset with Berger’s mailers,” she said. “It’s really hurting his campaign.”

Page, 69, has been in office since 1998, and Berger, 73, since 2000. Many Republican voters have voted for both of them for years.

Yards away from Barber at the Reidsville early voting site, Tim Hinkle and Glenn Petke, both military veterans, told The N&O in interviews about why they voted for Berger.

Petke, of Stoneville, was wearing a Vietnam veteran and Marine Corps hat. Berger got Petke’s vote because of the senator’s experience, he said. “He’s been there.”

Hinkle also voted for Berger, saying it was a tough decision because Page is his friend.

Berger “is the man we need” in Raleigh, he said, and called him a “fine man.”

Berger does what he says he’ll do, he said. He thinks Page is a great man, too, and has done a great job as sheriff.

“But this isn’t the time” to run for Senate, he said. “I can’t say enough about Berger and (Rep. Reece Pyrtle, an incumbent also facing a primary challenge).”

“Page — I love him to death. It’s just not the time,” Hinkle said.

But for Jeremiah Apple, this is the right time for Page. Apple said he voted for him because Page spends more time in the county than Berger does and has been in office a long time. He also didn’t like Berger’s handling of his family’s custody case in the 1990s.

Apple and Hinkle started talking to each other about their Christian faith, finding a common bond there, while agreeing to disagree about who should be Rockingham County’s senator. Hinkle went to his car to get a devotional book to give to Apple.

In a heavily red district, whoever wins this primary is expected to win in November. Berger won his 2024 election with 56% of the vote, with the Democratic candidate receiving 38%.

Vickie Layne was volunteering outside another early voting location on Feb. 20, in Eden at City Hall. She was holding a sign for Seth Woodall, who is running in the House Republican primary against Pyrtle. She planned to vote the next day, and said it would be for Berger.

“He’s been in (the Senate) for years and years. … He’s brought Rockingham County a lot of money and we sure appreciate it,” she said.

Dale Warren of Eden is a regular volunteer both for the county Republican Party and the city. She knows most of the folks going in and out of Eden City Hall on any given day.

Berger got her vote.

“I do believe in my heart Phil is a passionate man and believes what he’s doing,” Warren said.

She didn’t get the 2023 controversy over bringing a casino to Rockingham County, a plan Berger supported but that ultimately failed.

There’s a casino across the state line in Virginia. Rockingham County is on the state border and competes with Virginia for jobs and residents.

Warren is from New Jersey, and said casinos are normal and bring in money for communities, from hospitals to police.

Warren, who serves on the Eden Tree Board, talked about what she likes about her city and county, including Freedom Park, which is about a mile from Eden City Hall. The city named the street the park is on after Berger, she said, showing a photo of the legislator accepting the honor at a ceremony.

“Phil is a very deserving man. That’s just my opinion,” she said. “I just think he’s right for North Carolina and I know he’s working hard to make it 100% better. I think he’s going to win, hands down.”

As Warren talked with a reporter as the working day ended and the sun started to set, an election worker left City Hall, telling her that day’s tally so far of early votes: 142. And there was still about two hours left of voting that evening.

A week before the primary, Berger and Page make their case

On Tuesday, Feb. 24, seven days out from the primary, Berger and Page were out talking with voters at the early voting locations.

Berger visited the Eden early voting location. Warren was there again. Berger greeted voters and spoke to The N&O and local television stations, in a visit his campaign announced the night before.

Some people have described this as the hardest campaign Berger has faced. But Berger sees similarities to a race early in his career, when he was running for a second term in 2002.

“We’ll see how it turns out,” Berger said in an interview. “But the second race that I had was very similar to this, because what happened is the Democrats double-bunked me with Bob Shaw, and the district was sort of similar to this district.

“It was Rockingham County and a good part of Guilford County, and Bob had been in the Senate from Guilford County for a number of years. He had been a county commissioner elected county-wide in Guilford County,” he said.

“This one is reminiscent of that. It’s probably not as, or it clearly was not, as high profile, simply because you were looking at two minority Republicans running against each other in a district. But as far as the engagement and the activity that was required of me — it’s very similar.”

Berger won that primary election with 75% of the vote. The total vote count was 2,560 to 838, according to the State Board of Elections results.

Senate Republicans chose Berger to lead their caucus in 2004, when Democrats still dominated the legislature. When Berger helped lead the GOP to take control of the General Assembly after the 2010 election, they kept him at the forefront, and he has served as president pro tempore ever since. Republicans have a supermajority in the Senate, and are just one vote shy of total control in the House, which has been led by Republican House Speaker Destin Hall for the past year.

Berger said he’s the more effective candidate over Page because of his time already in the Senate, and leading it. He also pointed to his success in bringing business to Rockingham and Guilford counties.

Philosophically, Berger said, he and Page differs on their outlook on taxes. Berger said he’s committed to keeping planned tax cuts, while Page has aligned himself with the House Republicans’ budget proposal that would slow future tax cuts.

Page told The N&O the same day that he sees the House Republicans’ budget proposal as “more practical” when it comes to tax cuts.

“You don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself and cut yourself short,” Page said.

A contrast in public officials

Both Berger and Page live in Eden. Berger spent many years as an attorney and is still licensed, but doesn’t generate any income now from it, he said.

Page grew up in Reidsville, and made his first run for office as a Democrat, then switched parties to Republican in the 1990s, he said.

In an interview with The N&O on Tuesday, Page said he took vacation time from his daily sheriff job this final week to focus on his campaign.

With about three decades’ experience in law enforcement, Page said he is ready to move into a different role. He ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2024, losing in the primary. He said he doesn’t want to run for Congress because he doesn’t want to live in Washington, and that he had heard Berger was retiring.

“I want to live here. This is my home, and I think I can do more, because I’m also familiar with North Carolina, and I know a lot of sheriffs, I know a lot of officials — that can be beneficial working in the legislature,” Page said.

Trump, who he campaigned for in 2016, offered Page a job last December if he would drop out of the race against Berger. He said he turned down the job offer, which came as the president endorsed Berger, because he was already committed to run.

On Tuesday, Page ate lunch at the Mayflower seafood restaurant in the shopping center near the Madison voting site, which is the local library.

As soon as Page walked in the restaurant door, he was greeted by people finishing up their lunch. As he sat and ate lunch, people came up to him, too. On the way out the door, people approached Page, who is easy to spot in a cowboy hat.

One of the people who came up to talk to Page is a local pastor who said Page has spoken at his church. Torrey Easler voted Tuesday — for Page.

“I’ve worked with him on a personal level since 2008; he spoke at my church,” Easler, who is the pastor of Mayodan First Baptist Church, told The N&O. Easler said that Page is “genuine, and up front about everything.”

As he walked away from the Page’s lunch table, he told him he was praying for him.

Henry Clark, another diner who approached Page, said he’s known him for several years and trusts his judgment. Clark voted for him because “he’s not all talk, he’s business.”

Clark said he got more than a dozen campaign fliers in the mail that day — seven supporting Berger, one for Page and the others for other primary candidates.

But he already had voted.

Election Day is March 3. Page and Berger both said they’ll spend the day visiting polling places, each shaking hands and making their final pitch to voters.

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