NC-09: Candidate filing closed Friday for the May 14 special election primaries for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, a contest that’s being held because the original race was marred by election fraud by GOP operatives, and the state has a list of contenders available here.
North Carolina requires a primary runoff for contests where no one takes at least 30 percent of the vote. The runoffs would take place on Sept. 10, and the general election would be Nov. 5. However, if no such runoffs are required, the general would be held on Sept. 10.
Marine veteran Dan McCready, who was Team Blue’s nominee in the 2018 contest, is running again, and he faces no primary opposition. Things are very different on the GOP side, though, where 10 candidates are running and there’s no obvious frontrunner. One Green and one Libertarian are also in.
Mark Harris, the 2018 Republican nominee, is backing Union County Commissioner Stony Rushing rather than running again himself. Rushing, who owns a firing range and firearms store, has ardently denied that Harris benefited from any election fraud and argued that it was Democrats who were the guilty party.
Rushing also earned himself some unusual attention when he posted a proposed deal with reporters to Facebook: Rushing said he’d “give an exclusive interview about my sexual history from loss of virginity to today to the reporter who can get Dan McCready to answer these three questions.” Those questions were about McCready’s support for abortion rights, the Green New Deal, and something difficult to parse about an alleged tip regarding the board’s election fraud investigation. Rushing seems to have been motivated to do this after Popular Information’s Judd Legum interviewed him about a truly bizarre 2015 lawsuit.
The only other current elected official in the race is state Sen. Dan Bishop, who will reportedly self-fund at least $250,000. Bishop is best known as the author of House Bill 2 in 2016, also known as the anti-LGBT “bathroom bill.” The law, which required anyone using bathrooms at schools or public facilities to use the restroom associated with the gender on their birth certificate, caused a national backlash and led a number of businesses to cancel planned expansions into North Carolina, and it also contributed to GOP Gov. Pat McCrory’s 2016 defeat. Bishop’s career survived, though, and last year, he was re-elected 53-47 in a seat that Trump carried 50-47.
Two former elected officials are also in. Former Mecklenburg County Commissioner Matthew Ridenhour, who was an early Charlotte tea party organizer, narrowly lost re-election to his historically Republican South Charlotte district last fall in what the News & Observer called a "surprise sweep by Democrats." Despite that recent defeat, Ridenhour is arguing he's the strongest GOP candidate against McCready, a fellow Marine veteran, saying that "it takes a Marine to beat a Marine."
We also have former state Sen. Fern Shubert, whose last few campaigns have gone badly. Shubert left the state Senate in 2004 to run for governor, but she ended up taking a meager 4 percent of the vote in the primary. Shubert lost a 2012 primary to return to the legislature and a 2014 primary for state auditor. She also seems obsessed with homosexuality, blaming same-sex marriage for "rising crime rates" and expressing terror over "homosexual recruitment."
Another contender is Leigh Thomas Brown, a former official at the National Association of Realtors. The NAR’s political arm is famous for spending plenty of money in congressional contests for candidates on both sides of the aisle, and the Charlotte Observer’s Jim Morrill relays that Brown is “said to be able to match” Bishop in fundraising. Brown ran for a state House seat in 2014 and lost the primary 62-38 to incumbent Larry Pittman.
Five other Republicans are in, but none of them look serious at this point. This includes attorney Chris Anglin, who was a registered Democrat until he launched a 2018 state Supreme Court bid as a Republican. Anglin’s campaign that spoiled Team Red’s scheme to keep an opponent of their gerrymanders, Democrat Anita Earls, off the court, and state Republicans remain just as furious with him.
This seat, which includes a portion of the city of Charlotte as well as its nearby suburbs, backed Trump 55-43, but McCready’s strong showing even in the face of GOP fraud shows it’s quite winnable. In mid-February, McCready’s allies at the DCCC also released an in-house poll giving him a 50-46 lead over a generic Republican.
McCready’s opponent, of course, won’t be Generic Republican, but Team Red may wish they could nominate this mythical creature rather than any of their 10 real choices. Indeed, local Republicans have been fretting what former Gov. Pat McCrory dubbed a group of candidates who only hold "second-tier positions.” Republicans almost always bemoan how bad their nominee is ahead of a House special election, but they usually at least wait until they have a nominee.