He won a GOP congressional primary in NC. But now party leaders can’t even reach him.

Most congressional candidates spend their time running through their districts, hustling from one event and one voter to another and never seeming to have enough time to do it all.

Not Republican Paul Wright.

Wright, 70, is the GOP nominee in the 12th Congressional District. He faces Democratic incumbent Alma Adams in the heavily Democratic district that covers most of Mecklenburg County.

Since winning the May primary, Wright has been virtually invisible in the district.

State and local Republican leaders have reached out in vain. The Observer tried unsuccessfully to reach him. Responding to an email, an assistant said “he may take interviews at a later date but currently is not.”

Wright, a former district court judge, lives 235 miles from Charlotte in Mount Olive, a town outside Goldsboro in the 7th District. Congressional candidates don’t have to live in the district they run in.

According to his website, Wright is running on a platform of fighting what he calls the “deChristianization” of America and reversing court decisions on abortion and same-sex marriage. He has filed no reports with the Federal Election Commission. Adams has more than $254,000 on hand.

In the last six years he’s run for governor, U.S. Senate and Congress from two different districts. This is the first time he’s won his party’s nomination.

Twelfth District Chair Linda Angele hasn’t seen him since a party event in February. Paul Bonham, a former teacher who campaigned extensively in the primary, remembers running into Wright a couple of times. He lost the primary to him by less than 900 votes.

“Mr. Wright has run four times, so he had a little bit of name recognition,” Bonham said Wednesday.

This story was originally published August 1, 2018 at 2:09 PM.