In my disappointment at getting stuck with Thom Tillis in the Senate for another 6 years, I thought it time to champion a woman I’ve been waiting for years to see move up to the US Congress.
Deborah Ross won the newly redrawn US House district 2 on November 3. It is a ridiculously big land mass of a district, encompassing parts of six different counties, including much of Wake, home to Raleigh. The urban/rural split in NC 2 is about 68-37, with a population of approximately 820,000 and it would take an hour and half to drive end to end. No small job.
The district was redrawn in 2019 in response to a gerrymandering lawsuit. Rep. George Holding (R) saw the writing on the wall and decided not to run for re-election. (He was my Rep., he was awful, and at one point was photographed asleep on the House floor while Louis Gohmert railed against Obamacare during the 2013 shutdown. Enough said.)
Deborah Ross, meanwhile, had served as an NC House Rep. in the 38th and 34th districts for more than 10 years. She was both a Majority and Minority whip, and chaired the Judicial, Election Laws, and Ethics Committees.
She took on Richard Burr for his Senate seat in 2016, crisscrossing every nook and cranny of this state—I went to a handful of her appearances--and in a saner world, she should have won. Burr’s attittude toward her was similar to Mitch McConnell’s with Amy McGrath this time around: Who are are you and why should I care? And so, he was able to phone it in and walk off with another term, his last, as previously announced.
Deborah was born in Philly, has a B.A. from Brown in International Relations, and a J.D. from UNC’s School of Law. She practiced law for years here, including civil rights law, infrastructure, Constitutional law and renewable energy law. She also was the State Director of the ACLU from ‘94-’02 before running for the NC State House, and was a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke’s Law School.
She won this race easily, beating Republican Alan Swain by a margin of 63% to 35%. I’m really excited to see her in national office. She’ll be a fighter for progressive issues.