2 blue, 2 red: Here’s who the Charlotte area could send to Congress

Mecklenburg County voters will choose their next two representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives in November, with one new district that includes uptown, south Charlotte, west Charlotte and about half of Gaston County.

In the 12th District, Democratic Rep. Alma Adams is running for her fifth term against Republican Tyler Lee, a first-time candidate. That district includes most of eastern and northern Mecklenburg County, as well as Concord, Kannapolis and Harrisburg.

State Sen. Jeff Jackson is the Democratic nominee for the new 14th District. He’s up against Republican Pat Harrigan, who runs a gun manufacturing company. The district runs from Matthews to Gastonia.

The Democrats are favored to win both races. Adams’ district leans strongly Democratic. The 14th District is expected to be tighter, but previous election results from the district appear to give Jackson the edge.

Both Harrigan and Jackson are military veterans, though their politics diverge on gun control, abortion and other prominent issues.

In the 12th, the candidates are far apart on many key issues. Lee has been an outspoken critic of Adams and the Democratic Party generally, going as far as calling President Joe Biden a pedophile in a Twitter post in September.

Both of the congressional races in the areas around Mecklenburg County lean heavily Republican.

The 8th District includes Davidson, Rowan, Stanly, Montgomery and Anson counties, and much of Cabarrus and Richmond counties.

The 10th District includes Iredell, Alexander, Catawba, Lincoln, Cleveland and Burke counties, as well as western Gaston County and eastern Rutherford County.

Adams up for reelection

Adams, 76, is seen as the strong front-runner in this race based in part on the partisan lean of the district. Her political career began more than two decades ago, when she served on the Greensboro City Council. She was appointed in 1994 to serve in the state House of Representatives.

She served 10 terms there and became chair of the North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus. She won a special election in 2014 and entered the U.S. House of Representatives.

Adams has been a vocal supporter of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Her congressional bio calls the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education her “signature legislative accomplishment.” The bill permanently provides $85 million annually for HBCUs, and $170 million more to other minority-serving institutions.

Adams supports the right to an abortion. In a speech following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, Adams said the court “greenlit forced pregnancy, taking away the right to bodily autonomy from women.”

Lee, 35, attended Liberty University and has worked in real estate, according to the biography on his campaign website. He decided to run for office in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In January of 2021, I felt God calling me to enter into the political arena when I saw the corrupt government taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis by pushing their radical agenda on the American people,” his website reads.

Lee won the May primary with 42.8% of the vote, beating out two challengers. He’s been a vocal critic of the Biden administration, citing inflation and concerns around immigration on the southern border. In September, he said on Twitter he supports an immigration moratorium “until we know who’s coming in and out.”

Lee said in a Q&A with the Observer ahead of the primary that he supported turning abortion rights over to the states.

He made news in September for opposing a Drag Queen Story Hour event, and referred to people who dress in drag as pedophiles.

Locally, Lee received condemnation from members of both political parties.

In new district, a closer race

The closest race in the area may be between Jackson and Harrigan.

The district is solidly Democratic. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said it would be “a national news story if a Republican was able to win (the 14th District).”

Still, it is substantially closer than the other congressional races in and around Mecklenburg County.

Harrigan, 35, graduated from West Point with a degree in nuclear engineering. He went on to serve as a Green Beret in Afghanistan.

Harrigan and his wife, Rocky, opened a firearm manufacturing business while he was on active duty and operated it from their double-wide trailer home near Fayetteville, according to his website.

Both Jackson and Harrigan have signaled a willingness to work across the aisle on gun law reform. Harrigan declined to be interviewed for a story comparing their views in July, but said in a statement that he supports “better coordination between mental health systems and law enforcement, more access to juvenile behavioral histories, and other reasonable safeguards that will help prevent these tragedies in the future.”

Harrigan has criticized the Biden administration for its policies on the southern border.

“Right now, under President Joe Biden, we don’t have a border,” Harrigan says on his website. “And if we don’t have a border, we don’t have a country.”

He also supports revamping the immigration system to expedite legal immigration, saying immigrants’ contributions to America are “invaluable, and it is in our nation’s best interests to harness the brain trust and productive capacity of the world’s brightest minds.”

Jackson, 40, is a former assistant district attorney for Gaston County and was appointed to the state Senate in 2014. He launched a campaign for U.S. Senate last year, but dropped out of the race in December and endorsed Cheri Beasley, the current Democratic nominee.

He announced his bid for the 14th District in February.

In surrounding counties, Republicans have the edge

If Harrigan winning in the 14th District warrants a national news story, a Democratic victory in the 8th or 10th might be cause for an international one.

In the 10th District, incumbent Republican Patrick McHenry is running for his 10th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

McHenry, 46, is up against Pamela Genant, a registered nurse and veteran. Genant’s website says she’d push for increased spending on high-speed internet infrastructure and expanding rural health care access.

In the 8th, Republican incumbent Dan Bishop of Charlotte is running for reelection. Bishop, 58, entered Congress in 2019 after winning a special election, and then won his first reelection bid in 2020.

He faces Scott Huffman, a small business owner who has unsuccessfully run for Congress twice before, most recently against Rep. Ted Budd, who is running for U.S. Senate.

This story was originally published October 14, 2022 at 6:00 AM.

Will Wright

The Charlotte Observer

Will Wright covers politics in Charlotte and North Carolina. He previously covered eastern Kentucky for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and worked as a reporting fellow at The New York Times.