North Carolina Republican lawmakers drew the state’s congressional map to favor the GOP in 11 of the 14 seats.
Most of those districts were created to have so many conservative voters that it was inconceivable that a Democrat could win.
Then came Tuesday night — and a Democratic wave that stunned the state’s Republican congressional delegation, including one of the state’s best-known and most powerful Republicans, former state House Speaker Tim Moore.
When he was speaker of the state House, Moore helped draw the congressional map that included a seat tailor-made for him.
It included some Democratic areas of western Mecklenburg County, but most of the voters were in red counties: Gaston, Rutherford, Burke and Moore’s home of Cleveland County.
He easily won his first race in 2024. He raised nearly $2 million for his reelection bid in 2026.
He recorded a folksy social media video during early voting with his mother.
“I tell ya it’s been a long campaign and we’ve been working hard,” Moore said. “I even got mom out here helping me today!”
On paper, it shouldn’t have been a contest. Moore won his last election by 16 points. His name is on road signs dotted through the district along highways that proclaim “Home of Congressman Tim Moore.
His Democratic opponent, LaKesha Womack, had never run for office before.
She received no money from national Democratic groups. She raised just $56,000.
She said she spent that on “signs, a lot of lit, and a lot of gas.”
But President Trump’s record-low approval ratings gave Womack — and other long-shot congressional Democrats — hope.
“I’m really into data and in 2025 I was watching the special elections around the country,” Womack said.
She said Democratic overperformance in those elections made her realize she could win.
Womack is 49. She lives in Charlotte and runs a consulting business. She grew up in Alabama, and said her campaign focused on the more rural parts of the district.
“I grew up in a rural county and know that rural counties just have a different need than a lot of like Charlotte or Raleigh type elections, so I really ran a campaign that was focused on the area that I was running for,” she said.
The media barely covered the race. Her biggest news splashes were news reports in late October that a criminal summons against her had been re-issued for allegedly not returning a rental car in 2019.
Nevertheless, Womack rolled up huge margins in suburban parts of west and north Mecklenburg, and then cut into Moore’s leads in the other counties. She won with a little more than 51 percent of the vote.
Her victory is even more surprising in that she is a Black woman who won in an overwhelmingly white district.
She did not celebrate extravagantly.
“I had my own watch party,” Womack said. “I had some family here, and I had some friends who flew in. And I really wanted to do something special for the people who worked so hard for the people who helped us get to this point.”
She said Wednesday afternoon that she hasn’t gotten a telephone call from Moore after the race, and Moore hasn’t publicly commented on the loss.
Moore wasn’t the only big-name Republican to lose in a shocker.
Richard Hudson is the powerful Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He lost the 9th District to Democrat Richard Ojeda.
Republican Brad Knott lost the 13th District in the Triangle and Addison McDowell lost in the 6th.
Virginia Foxx is trailing by 99 votes in the 5th District. Even Republicans who hung on, like Pat Harrigan and Mark Harris, squeaked by with wins of two percentage points or less.
The state’s congressional delegation could go from Republicans having 10 of 14 seats to Democrats having 10 of 14.
