Political possibility or ‘hallucination’? NC Democrats aim to flip Republican congressional seats :: WRAL.com

Five months ago, Democrats worried about keeping the few congressional seats they hold in North Carolina. Republican state lawmakers had just redrawn the state’s 14 districts — 10 of which are already held by the GOP — to give the party an advantage in an eleventh, Democrat-held district in the coming midterm elections. 

But Democrats are starting to like their chances, as President Donald Trump’s approval ratings sag and inflation surges on skyrocketing gas prices — the result of a war with Iran that more than half of North Carolinians oppose.  

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it’s growing confident about the party’s ability to protect its North Carolina incumbents — and potentially flip at least one Republican-held seat. Republican groups and political analysts have their doubts. 

Such wins wouldn’t be without precedent. In a special election for a U.S. House seat in Georgia on Tuesday, Republican Clay Fuller won by about 12 percentage points —- despite Trump carrying the district by about 37 points in 2024. Last month, Democrats flipped a legislative seat in Florida — home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — that Republicans won by 19 percentage points in 2024. And in February, Democrats flipped a legislative seat in Texas that Trump carried by 17 points only two years prior. 

The DCCC, the official campaign committee of U.S. House Democrats, highlighted some of those wins in a newsletter Tuesday amid its push to expand its strategy in North Carolina. The group is no longer just focused on funding and providing other support for Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis in the state’s 1st Congressional District, a sprawling region that covers northeastern North Carolina. 

It is also raising funds for Democrat Jamie Ager’s bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards in the 11th Congressional District, which Trump won by 9.5 percentage points in 2024, and providing fundraising support to Democrat Raymond Smith’s campaign against U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy in the 3rd Congressional District, which Trump won by 13.6%. Edwards’ district covers North Carolina’s western tail, including deep-blue Asheville. Murphy’s district encompasses nine centrally-located counties along the eastern coast. 

The races for both the 3rd and 11th congressional seats are on the DCCC’s list of “districts in play.”

Madison Ardus, a DCCC spokesperson, declined to say how much money the group has raised. But polling and recent election results show that Democrats have reason to be optimistic. “Every day that goes by, voters sour more and more on this failed Republican agenda,” Ardus said.

Tariffs, immigration policies and the war in Iran have caused prices for all kinds of goods to increase in recent months. Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday. It’s the biggest year-over-year increase since May 2024, department data shows, an increase driven by the largest monthly jump in gas prices in six decades. 

An Elon University poll released this month showed that 55% of North Carolinians think the economy has gotten worse during Republican President Donald Trump’s second term. That’s up from 49% in September. And 47% gave the economy a ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade in March, up from 43% in September.

The poll also showed that 51% of North Carolinians oppose military involvement in Iran. About 55% of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s job performance during his second term, up from 51% in November.

A win for any of those Democrats — Davis, Ager or Smith — would be considered an upset. Voters in each of those three districts supported Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election by at least 9 percentage points.

‘Political hallucination’

Republicans are dismissing the DCCC’s optimism. The recent wins in Georgia, Florida and Texas came in special elections, which don’t draw as many voters as general elections, noted Reilly Richardson, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s PAC for electing Republicans. Richardson called it a “political hallucination” for Democrats to think they can defeat Edwards or Murphy. 

“They’re operating on our turf, and they’ll be stuck wasting their money in unwinnable districts with strong Republican incumbents,” Richardson said in a statement. 

The NRCC recently unveiled its own “MAGA Majority” guide for supporting Republicans in tight congressional races. The group identified Davis’s opponent, Laurie Buckhout, as one of the Republicans they’re supporting against Democratic incumbents. “As a retired Army Colonel who commanded troops in combat, Laurie Buckhout is ready to defeat do-nothing Don Davis and flip NC-01 red this November,” Richardson said.

Davis’s race against Buckhout is a rematch of the district’s election in 2024, when Davis won by about two percentage points. Then last year, at Trump’s behest, the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature redrew Davis’s district to give the GOP an advantage. Voters in the newly drawn district supported Trump over Harris in the 2024 presidential race by 11.6%. Davis last ran for reelection in a district where voters supported Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race by about 1.3%. 

Reelecting Davis remains the DCCC’s top priority despite the district’s new Republican lean, Ardus said. The seat has been in Democratic hands for over a century and has had a Black representative since 1992. 

Davis’s campaign told WRAL that voters are rallying around his campaign because he is fighting to make their lives more affordable. 

“Eastern North Carolina families, from the northeast to the coast, are facing rising costs for groceries, gas, and healthcare, straining their budgets,” the Davis campaign said in a statement to WRAL, adding that Davis aims to deliver solutions that cut costs, create jobs, and improve rural health care. 

Buckhout’s campaign said it’s a “fantasy” for Democrats to think they can save Davis. Davis will face political consequences for voting against Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Buckhout’s campaign said in a statement.

Davis “voted against tax cuts and against deporting violent illegal aliens,” Buckhout’s campaign said. “Voters know it, and they’re ready to fire him and send Col. Laurie Buckhout to Washington to cut taxes, secure the border, and fight for eastern North Carolina.”

The DCCC believes Edwards and Murphy are vulnerable because they’ll face challenges they haven’t in past elections, Ardus said.

‘Urgency’ out west

Edwards will likely face blowback for the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene, Ardus said. The storm, which hit western North Carolina in September 2024, caused an estimated $60 billion worth of damages to the state — and the state has received roughly $10 billion from the state and federal governments. 

Even though Edwards has introduced bills aimed at speeding aid to the state, Democrat Jamie Ager is expected to paint Edwards as part of the problem, not the solution. Ager, who owns a farm and a meat business, told WRAL that he entered the race because he witnessed the federal government’s slow response first-hand. Ager said disaster recovery is “far and away, the number one issue” to voters in the region, adding that government support has been “too little and too late.”

Edwards, first elected in 2022, told WRAL that supporting Helene victims has been his top priority for months. Edwards said he was able to help secure $8 billion from the federal government because he’s the only North Carolinian on the House Appropriations Committee. 

“Serving as an appropriator, the only appropriator from North Carolina, I have a distinct advantage in having access to channels and ears that I would not have otherwise. There’s rarely a day that goes by that I’m not in contact with someone in FEMA or a cabinet secretary,” Edwards said. “I’m constantly on the phone or meeting with folks to impress upon them the urgency that Western North Carolina feels in terms of our hurricane recovery.”

Edwards blamed the slow federal response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s processes for approving aid: “The biggest issue we’ve had is the inherent red tape and bureaucracy that’s been built into the natural disaster relief process for decades.”

Others, including U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, have blamed former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for delays in disaster relief to North Carolina. The Homeland Security Department oversees FEMA. Noem faced criticism for her policy requiring that any amount of spending over $100,000 needed her personal approval.

Edwards said he thinks Trump’s nominee to replace Noem, Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, “will make a big difference in how fast some of this aid is given.” Edwards and Davis say they have support from at least 50 members of Congress for a bill they cosponsored aimed at streamlining approvals for disaster recovery funds. 

Ager said he’s “not a hyper partisan person” and is open to working across the aisle. “Nobody’s got a monopoly on all the good ideas,” Ager said. “The work is getting in there and having good discussions and getting to know each other and actually putting in policy that helps people. To me, our government hasn’t done that for the past several years.”

Murphy, meanwhile, is now a more competitive district than he was in previous elections. 

Murphy confident Down East 

First elected in 2019, Murphy has cruised to victory each election by more than 24 percentage points. However, the recent redistricting project moved some of Murphy’s former Republican constituents into Davis’s district. Voters in Murphy’s newly-drawn district supported Trump over Harris by 13.6%.

Democratic challenger Raymond Smith, a combat veteran who served in the state House of Representatives from 2019 to 2023, is someone “who that community knows very well, who has the ability to energize those voters, and kind of re-energize a base in a way that Greg Murphy has never come up against before,” Ardus said.

Smith has experience on the campaign trail in the area. He ran for state Senate in 2022 after a redraw of the state’s election map changed his House district. Smith lost the Democratic primary for his local Senate seat in 2022, and then lost the general election for the seat in 2024.

Smith told WRAL he thinks he can beat Murphy because voters are ready for a change. “Neither I, nor the people of this district, have ever confused a partisan label with a permanent outcome,” he said.

“I can beat Greg Murphy because this race is going to come down to who understands the everyday lives of the people in this district and who is prepared to fight for them,” Smith said. “I’m running on the issues people talk about every day: lowering costs, protecting access to health care, strengthening public education, supporting farmers and rural communities, standing up for veterans and military families, creating economic opportunity, and protecting the right to vote.”

Murphy said in a statement to WRAL that he expects to win reelection on his record of supporting tax cuts, cracking down on immigration and fighting for affordable health care. 

“If out-of-touch leftists want to waste their California and New York donors’ money trying to convince patriotic Eastern North Carolinians to vote for higher taxes, ridiculous open borders and divisive woke ideology, they are welcome to do so,” Murphy said. “The contrast between myself and a perennial candidate could not be clearer.”

‘Tough seat to hold’ 

Political analysts are skeptical that Democrats can flip any Republican seats in North Carolina.

Defeating Edwards and Murphy would likely require a sizable Democratic turnout fueled by a major financial investment, said Kyle Kondik, an analyst for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. 

In 2024, Democrats didn’t win any districts that Trump carried by 10 or more percentage points, Kondik said. In 2018 — the most recent blue-wave election year — the lion’s share of Democratic gains came in districts that Democrat Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 or that Trump won in 2016 by single digits, he said. 

“The bottom line is that the NC map is certainly designed to elect 11 Republicans and three Democrats, and that remains the likeliest outcome,” Kondik said in an email. “However, the political environment could be strong enough this November to allow Democrats to do a little better than that.”

The Cook Political Report, a Virginia-based nonpartisan group that studies the competitiveness of elections, rated Davis’s race as “Lean Republican,” meaning the race is competitive but that Buckhout has an advantage. The group rated the Edwards district “Likely Republican,” meaning Edwards is likely to win but that the race could become competitive. And it rated Murphy’s district “Solid Republican,” meaning his reelection bid isn’t expected to become competitive at all.

“Even in a very good environment for Democrats with a strong incumbent like Don Davis, that’s going to be a tough seat to hold,” said Erin Covey, an analyst for Cook Political Report.

Covey said that the Edwards race has the “ingredients” to become competitive because Ager is a strong fundraiser. “It would not surprise me if that is one of the ‘Likely Republican’ races that kind of comes online and shifts into a ‘Lean [Republican]’ category,” she said.

While Smith has “the right profile” to pose a threat to Murphy, the district is so Republican leaning that “you would need really energized Democratic turnout, and then you would just need, like anemic enthusiasm among the Republican voters in that district for that to actually come into play.”

Covey added that political groups such as the DCCC and NRCC sometimes exaggerate their campaign plans in an effort to coax the opposing party into wasting money. It’s possible the DCCC is signaling an intent to get involved in the 3rd and 11th districts in hopes that the NRCC and other Republican donors send money to those races instead of helping Buckhout’s campaign against Davis, she said.

“Even in a very good environment for Democrats with a strong incumbent like Don Davis, that’s going to be a tough seat to hold,” Covey said.