Deborah Ross’ biggest fault? “I want to be perfect all the time,” said the North Carolina Democratic Senate nominee.

Ross wasn’t national Democrats’ first choice to take on two-term Republican Sen. Richard M. Burr.

Yet Ross, a former state House representative with low statewide name recognition, won a resounding victory in Tuesday’s four-way Democratic primary. She carried 62 percent of the vote — a hair more than two-term Burr carried in his four-way GOP primary.

Ross was already running a general election campaign, but she now embarks on an uphill battle for unaffiliated voters in a deeply purple state, where the governor’s race is the marquee statewide contest and the presidential battle will go a long way toward determining turnout.

Sitting at Raleigh’s Cupcake Shoppe, just blocks from her house one early morning, Ross — already a high-energy person — reluctantly ordered a regular iced latte after hearing that the establishment wasn’t serving decaf. She’d been up for hours and already had her caffeine. The phrase she repeatedly used to describe herself was “a both-and kind of person.”