Gaston County lawmaker now known for Jan. 6 protest. What about before that?
Donnie Loftis made national headlines about as early as possible after landing a seat in the North Carolina General Assembly. Democrats walked out of the House chamber before he was sworn in.
The planned protest followed the revelation that Loftis, a former Gaston County commissioner, had been part of the protest in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 that became a deadly insurrection.
Until then Loftis was known as a Gaston County Republican with a conservative track record and a recent penchant for getting in hot water over his political positions.
“People are focusing on the whole Jan. 6 thing. He’s definitely somebody that’s much more than that, someone who’s been around our party and our community longer than that,” said Jonathan Fletcher, chairman of the Gaston County GOP.
Twice before he was sworn into the North Carolina House of Representatives, Loftis sought the same seat representing the state’s 109th District.
Both times he lost the Republican primary. The third attempt was the charm when Gaston County Republican Party members appointed him to finish the term of powerful state Rep. Dana Bumgardner, who died Oct. 2.
Before that, Loftis was in and out of local public office since 2000, scattering clues as to who he is outside the recent controversy.
Taxes, veterans, social issues
The newly seated representative is considered to be a steady Republican hand on the local party’s top issues, said Fletcher, who has known Loftis and his family for more than 15 years.
During his time on the Gaston County commission, Loftis pushed to keep taxes low and boost funding for police and veterans in Gaston County. Back in 2003, Loftis persuaded county officials to add another employee to help the county’s overburdened Veterans Services office, according to The Charlotte Observer.
Loftis, his wife and his daughter did not respond to multiple attempts to get comment for this story. Nor did several Gaston County Republicans and Democrats.
Loftis represented Gastonia on the Gaston County Board of Commissioners for two stints, first from 2000 to 2004. By the end of his term he was chairman of the commission. A review of news clips from that period show a conservative Republican ready to speak out on social issues.
While a school board candidate in 2004 after his unsuccessful run for the state House seat, he advocated teaching abstinence in schools and said he was open to restricting some books. “If our community feels like a book shouldn’t be there, I’m all for that,” was his response to a question about censorship that The Observer published that year.
Loftis ended up losing the school board race to the incumbent, Democrat Jennifer Davis.
A year later, Loftis, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Army and the Army National Guard who retired in 2010, found himself thousands of miles from home. He was, he has said, in charge of the morale, welfare, training and more of 180 soldiers at Camp Anaconda near the Tigris River in Iraq and received a Bronze star.
In a Facebook post where Loftis said he had been at the “Stop the Steal Rally” in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, he noted that he was close enough to the Capitol to be tear-gassed before it was breached. He also alluded to his time in the military.
“My Oath of Enlistment has the phrase ‘both foreign and domestic,’” he wrote in a now-deleted post reported by WRAL. “We didn’t think it would actually be domestic.”
A voice for the right
Around the end of his term in 2012 — the last time he served on the county commission — more signs of Loftis as a culture warrior started to appear. Speaking at a forum about a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in North Carolina, Loftis made his position clear.
“I have a Defense of Marriage Act sign in my yard,” Loftis said at the time, according to reports in The Observer. “I believe marriage between one man and one woman can impact our society greater than anything else we can do.”
A few days after he made those statements, Loftis lost his second bid for the state House of Representatives, again losing in the Republican primary.
But all wasn’t lost for him in 2012. That’s the year he joined the Board of Directors at CaroMont Health, the largest hospital system in Gaston County, a position he still holds today, despite resigning as chairman in 2020.
Loftis last ran for office in 2016, when he sought to rejoin the Gaston County Commission. Loftis lost in the primary to Don Grant, who went on to win the seat in the general election.
Loftis appears to have been among the many millions of people swept up in the fervor of Donald Trump’s election in 2016. After Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Loftis told The Gaston Gazette the occasion gave him “a warm and fuzzy” feeling.
When COVID-19 hit last year, prompting widespread shutdowns and quarantines. Loftis sounded off with disdain on Facebook. One meme he posted, since removed, read: “Quarantine is when you restrict the movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.”
That and other Facebook shares, including misinformation from doctors who compared COVID-19 to the seasonal flu, led to Loftis’ first taste of political controversy. Backlash led to his resignation as chairman of the board at CaroMont Health.
Loftis’ positions on COVID-19 didn’t end his standing in his home county, though. He is a CaroMont Health board member, according to the health system’s website.
“I think he was on the forefront of the personal freedom side of things,” said Fletcher, the Gaston GOP chairman. “I think he was someone willing to talk about that in the beginning. Other people weren’t willing to talk about that.”
Distancing himself
Loftis has worked to distance himself from the rioters that ransacked the Capitol, at one point even breaking into congressional offices and chambers.
“On Jan. 6, 2020, [sic] while I peacefully exercised my first amendment rights in front of the US Capitol, I was surprised and disappointed to watch others storm the entrance as violence ensued,” WRAL reported he said in a text message. “I had absolutely zero involvement in the rioting and categorically condemn the storming of our Capitol building that day.”
Fletcher said he was aware that Loftis was in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 while Gaston County Republicans deliberated last month on who to pick to fill Bumgardner’s seat. He’s not sure everyone in the room knew, he said.
Either way, Fletcher said the topic wasn’t discussed at all the night Loftis edged out Gaston County Commissioner Ronnie Worley and Lauren Bumgardner Current, daughter of the House seat’s previous holder. He won by merely three votes after about 40 people cast secret ballots, Fletcher said.
Loftis’ appointment to the House runs through next year. To keep the seat, he’ll need to be elected. Where he was on Jan. 6 will be more widely known then.
“I hope that he doesn’t think he was there as a patriot,” said fellow Army veteran and former Gaston County Democratic Party Chairman Danny Caudill about Loftis’ actions on Jan. 6. “I hope he can look back …and say that was a misguided thing.
“If he wants to stand on the ground he was there as a patriot, I hope he gets voted out of office.”
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