In a special election on Sept. 10, my campaign came an inch short of flipping a deep red congressional seat in North Carolina. We lost, but we showed how Democrats can win nationwide in 2020.
On paper, a Democrat never should have been competitive in my district — it hadn’t elected one since John F. Kennedy was president. Over time, the Ninth District had been gerrymandered to include Charlotte’s prosperous, Republican-leaning suburbs, its conservative exurbs, and rural counties left behind by Washington’s trade deals.
In 2016, our district’s voters supported President Trump by almost 12 points — yet last month we came within two points of winning. In the Charlotte suburbs, we outperformed President Trump’s margin by more than 16 points.
I announced my candidacy in May 2017 and came 905 votes short in last November’s midterm election, only to find out that my opponent’s campaign had perpetrated the largest case of election fraud in recent American history, targeting minority voters and tampering with their absentee ballots. I led an effort to expose the fraud, and elections officials called for the special redo election that was held last month.
My team knew our job would be harder than in 2018. Many Democrats were less likely to go to the polls in an off-year special election. It didn’t help that throughout 2019 the news media often focused on the most liberal national Democrats, which turned off many moderate voters in our district.
Despite coming up short, we did better than many expected, and much better than Democrats did in the district in the 2016 election. While each race is different, there are some core lessons that every Democrat should take from our experience.
