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Tim Moore is a household name in North Carolina, owing more to his 10 years as speaker of the state House than his lone term representing the 14th Congressional District. It seemed unfathomable that a political novice few knew before Tuesday night could send him packing from a gerrymandered district he drew for himself.
But Lakesha Womack did just that.
Democrats also appear to have defeated powerful and long-serving Virginia Foxx, though that race is still within the margin for a recount. Richard Hudson, a 13-year incumbent who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee—the very outfit charged with maintaining the GOP’s hold on the chamber—fell, too, as did Republican freshmen Addison McDowell and Brad Knott in highly gerrymandered districts that seemed destined to remain in GOP control.
Tuesday’s blue wave looks to have flipped N.C.’s congressional delegation from a 10-4 Republican advantage to a 10-4 Democratic one. Two more Republican-held seats are still close enough to go to a recount: David Rouzer in the 7th and Greg Murphy in the 3rd.
Who are the five relatively unknown Democrats heading to D.C.?
Chuck Hubbard — 5th District
Longtime community journalist Chuck Hubbard set his sights on politics after his family sold the Wilkes Journal-Patriot in 2020. He ran for a state House seat to learn the ropes, then he went after his real aim: Republican U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx.
His first time challenging Foxx in 2024, Hubbard lost by 19 percentage points. “We ran actually a very strong campaign, the hardest she ever faced,” he said, but attributed that loss, in part, to “problems at the top of the ticket” in a year President Donald Trump carried the state.
Hubbard gained name recognition beyond his home county of Wilkes that year, and especially in Guilford and Watauga counties, where the district’s Democratic voters are concentrated. That groundwork gave him confidence this year.
“Everything that we saw in the weeks up coming to the election showed it was going to be a close election,” he said Wednesday, “and we felt like the momentum was ours.” Students from N.C. A&T and UNC Greensboro “really came out,” he said, in part because they were denied on-campus polling places—“a direct attempt to suppress their vote.”
“They were upset about that,” he said. “They came out and marched. They came out and voted.” Foxx’s role as the chair of the House Rules Committee—the second-most powerful member of the chamber—also made her vulnerable this year, he said. “She was the gatekeeper. She chose what went up on the floor of the House or not, and as such, she led her committee to vote four times to block the release of the Epstein files—the worst pedophilia, sex-trafficking ring you can imagine of rich people involved in that kind of behavior.”
“People want change,” he said, “and they said so yesterday.”
As of Wednesday evening, Hubbard had a 99-vote lead over Foxx. He said he expects it to hold; from what he can tell, many of the uncounted ballots are from university students. “We believe that we’re in good shape,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to Washington, D.C. on Sunday with staff members and my wife for new member orientation.”
His wife, Shari, is a retired state trooper; the couple has three daughters, one of whom is a public defender.
As a congressman, Hubbard’s early priorities include the full, unredacted release of the Epstein files, ending the Iran war, and ensuring the release of more Hurricane Helene disaster relief funds for Western N.C.
“We’ve got people in my district that have ruined septic tank systems they can’t pay for, ruined roofs, no electricity, and this is more than two years out,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure that comes in.”
—Carli Brosseau
Cyril Jefferson — 6th District
When Cyril Jefferson defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Addison McDowell Tuesday, many voters outside the Triad had never heard of the 34-year-old Democrat.
But Jefferson has been a rising political star since he was first elected to the High Point City Council in 2019, just a year after graduating from N.C. A&T State University. Four years later, Jefferson became the first Black man elected mayor of High Point and the youngest ever to hold the office. Since then, he has concentrated on public-private partnerships to draw investment to the city’s downtown stadium district and add new housing units.
High Point is smaller than Greensboro and Winston-Salem, and has struggled with the loss of its furniture manufacturing industry. But U.S. Census Bureau data shows that, among North Carolina cities with populations over 100,000, it is now growing faster than anywhere but Charlotte.
The Assembly reached out to Jefferson following his victory but has not yet heard back. His day job is with the marketing and sales agency Stratagon, where he is the industry practice director for higher education.
“Cyril has been very forward-thinking and concentrated on solutions since he was first elected,” said Greensboro Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter, a fellow Democrat who has worked closely with him on Triad regional partnerships. “I’ve enjoyed seeing what he brings to our work, how he works with citizens, businesses, and higher education all toward the same goal.”
Jefferson has cited Tip O’Neill, storied former U.S. House Speaker from Massachusetts, as a model for his commitment to bipartisanship and compromise. That makes sense, Abuzuaiter said.
“I really think he can work across the aisle with anyone,” she said. “And he’ll continue to do that in Washington.”
—Joe Killian
Richard Ojeda — 9th District
Democrat Richard Ojeda grew up in West Virginia and spent much of his adult life in the Army, including years stationed at Fort Bragg and living in Fayetteville.
He liked the area so much that he moved to Moore County in 2020 after several years living in West Virginia following his retirement from the Army.
“But we missed the people of North Carolina, and we missed the access to everything that you have in this area,” said Ojeda, 56, who also brought his in-laws, parents, and two sisters. “I’ll tell you right now, we’ll never leave this place.”
Now he will get to represent it in Congress after defeating seven-term Republican Richard Hudson. Ojeda led Hudson 138,707 votes to 132,692—a 2.2-point margin–as of Wednesday evening.
In West Virginia, Ojeda served two years in the state Senate and made bids for U.S. House, Senate, and, briefly, president.
Ojeda said he started as an enlisted soldier, and later used the Army’s Green to Gold program to attend college and become an officer. He retired as a major in 2013, after 24 years of service.
His father was a military nurse, he said, and his grandfather was a coal miner who had immigrated from Mexico. He will be the first person of Hispanic heritage to represent the 9th District.
Ojeda felt confident he had a strong lead in early voting among Democrats and unaffiliated voters, and he also found a number of dissatisfied Republicans as he campaigned in the region.
The new congressman-elect has a list of priorities that include ending Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unleashed unlimited political spending, and passing the Protect the Right to Organize Act. “When you’re unionized, you have people that give you a seat at the table,” he said. He also wants to revise income tax laws to make a person’s first $45,000 in earnings tax-free.
As a veteran, representing Army members and their families will “be a No. 1 priority for me,” he said, and probably “one of the greatest things that I’ve ever done in my life.”
—Paul Woolverton
Paul Barringer — 13th District
Paul Barringer III, 59, moved back to North Carolina in early 2025 to help take care of his 96-year-old mother on the family’s 1,000-acre hardwood timber farm in Lee County. He also saw an opportunity.
“People are very disenchanted with the things that the current administration is doing,” Barringer told The Assembly in July. “People also recognize that the current Congress is not really fulfilling its constitutional obligations to be an independent body and to provide a check and balance on the other branches of government.”
He’ll get his shot next year after defeating Brad Knott, a one-term Republican incumbent from Wake County. Barringer won with 50.5% to Knott’s 48.1%, an upset in an oddly shaped district the Cook Political Report expected to have an 8-point Republican advantage.
Barringer graduated from Davidson College in 1990, and earned law and public policy degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Princeton University, respectively. He spent more than 15 years in Maryland, where he worked as a health care executive and was a registered Republican until last year.
“I was a Republican for a long time,” Barringer told The Assembly, noting that he considers himself both a conservative Democrat and a liberal Republican. “You have people dissatisfied with the impact of MAGA policies, but still quite centrist or conservative. What if you ran basically on a very moderate or centrist platform? You might have a chance, right?”
Asked about his career highlights, he lit up when talking about his athletic accomplishments.
He listed thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail with his wife, biking the length of New Zealand’s two islands, running the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim, and volunteering as a career counselor for prisoners and Sunday school teacher among his proudest accomplishments. Pushed for career highlights, he pointed to helping launch and improve state health care exchanges in Maryland, Minnesota, and Vermont.
Improving access to health care is one of his top priorities in Congress. Barringer noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut Medicaid eligibility for an estimated 11 million people, affected 30,000 people in his district. He also campaigned on reducing corruption, like addressing congressional stock trading, real estate deals, and the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion slush fund.
“What can we begin to do across party lines to address those issues?” Barringer said the day after his win. “How can Congress act as a real legislative body to provide accountability and oversight over the things that the administration does that are contributing to higher costs?”
—Ren Larson
Lakesha Womack — 14th District
Lakesha Womack has never held elected office, but on Tuesday the ordained minister and single mother defeated U.S. Rep. Tim Moore in a congressional district drawn to favor Republicans—specifically, him.
Womack ended the night 2.2 percentage points ahead of Moore with all precincts reported, according to unofficial results from the State Board of Elections. Moore, a former state House speaker, outspent her by roughly 35 to 1, according to campaign-finance reports.
Womack said she was less concerned about Moore’s political clout than the opportunity she saw in a Republican-leaning district. Where others saw a gerrymandered map, she saw the “fabric of America,” stretching from Charlotte’s urban neighborhoods to the smaller towns and farmland west of the city in Shelby and Rutherford counties.
Originally from Alabama, Womack graduated from Vanderbilt University and moved to Charlotte in 2016. She has worked as a political consultant and community organizer, including on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She credits her victory to spending months building relationships across the six counties included in the district.
“I don’t have main character syndrome,” she said Wednesday. “I just showed up to hear what the people were talking about and to be a part of their community and to learn about them.”
In Washington, Womack said she intends to focus on accountability and affordability. She wants greater scrutiny of the Trump administration and relief for constituents priced out of health insurance. She also pointed to the role of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the district, where the federal dollars that help families buy groceries also support the agricultural economy. Social Security and health care, she said, dominated her conversations with voters.
Those priorities are rooted in personal experience. Womack recalled living in a hotel with her young son and struggling to afford food. She described the challenges facing the “missing middle,” people who earn too much to qualify for assistance but not enough to get ahead.
“When you’ve been in that situation, then you look at the system in a totally different way,” she said.
Womack, who is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, drew a distinction between imposing religious beliefs through legislation and advocating for policies that reflect her beliefs.
“I don’t believe that it’s my responsibility to legislate my Christian values, but I do believe that it’s my responsibility to legislate in such a way that I see all people made in God’s image,” she said.
Her campaign faced scrutiny over a pending felony charge from 2020 related to an unreturned rental car. Womack questioned why authorities waited six years to pursue the allegation and characterized the timing of the summons last month as politically motivated. She accused Moore of using the charge in attack ads, which she suggested may have motivated some of her supporters. She did not address the underlying charge.
—Whitney Clegg
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