State Rep. Tricia Cotham Defeated in Mecklenburg

State Rep. Tricia Cotham, the Mint Hill Republican who was reelected with a 213-vote margin two years ago after a high-stakes defection from the Democratic Party, came up short this time. 

In Tuesday’s election, 57% of voters favored her opponent, Ken McCool, a 28-year-old former Matthews town commissioner.

McCool attributed his win to “a coalition of not just Democrats, but unaffiliated and Republicans” interested in a “new type of politics.” The campaign knocked on more than 30,000 doors, sent 15,000 postcards, and made 15,000 phone calls, he told The Assembly Tuesday night: “We met people where they were, and I think they appreciated that I was showing up.”

Cotham’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This race was long expected to be one of the tightest contests for any state legislative seat. House District 105 stretches along Mecklenburg County’s southeastern edge, including Mint Hill and part of Matthews. 

It had a slight Republican tilt when lawmakers drew it in the aftermath of Cotham’s party switch. This year, the Civitas Partisan Index rated it a tossup, with no partisan advantage.

Cotham’s 2023 rejection of the party her family members once helped lead gave Republicans a veto-proof majority and helped them clinch tighter abortion restrictions. That drew extra attention to her district. 

Gov. Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson, both Democrats, showed up to McCool’s campaign events. House Democratic Leader Robert Reives visited on Election Day.

Cotham, sidelined during part of campaign season due to jaw surgery, cast herself in campaign materials as the law-and-order candidate, touting an endorsement from the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association and highlighting her work to advance Iryna’s Law. State Republicans named the legislation for a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train in 2025 and pitched it as a way to keep violent criminals off the streets, in part by restricting pretrial release. In an ad, Cotham said McCool is supported by “the defund the police mob.” 

McCool, however, advertised his own law enforcement endorsement, a nod from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #9. He also noted in an interview that he plays on the Matthews Police Department’s sports teams. He has said he ran in part to make politics “boring” again.

Both claimed in campaign materials to be running to support affordability, but differed in their focus. Cotham pointed to tax cuts passed by the General Assembly, McCool to rising energy prices.

The contrast was stark on education, too. While Cotham, a former public school teacher, promoted the expansion of private-school vouchers, McCool emphasized fully funding public schools. 

McCool spoke often on the campaign about how Cotham’s presentation to his high school journalism class sparked his interest in politics. He told The Election Hub, a nonpartisan nonprofit that publishes election-related information in the Charlotte area, that he decided to run against her after he and a fellow Matthews commissioner visited her in Raleigh to discuss a major transportation bill she sponsored. Cotham posed for a picture and then said she had another meeting to get to, McCool said. Then he was prevented from sharing his thoughts publicly at a transportation committee meeting. The next day he announced his run.

McCool raised twice as much money as Cotham, according to the most recent campaign finance reports, which reflect donations through October 17.

Cotham had raised about $320,000, her filing showed. More than half of that came from Republican Party committees, other Republican candidates, and PACs. The N.C. House Republican Campaign Committee made in-kind donations worth $68,000, including a survey and direct mail, and the NCGOP covered $13,000 worth of printing and postage. PACs representing infrastructure companies and anesthesiologists also made big donations.

Cotham’s top individual donors included her father, John Cotham, the CEO of Carolina Industrial Trucks and a former Mecklenburg Democratic Party chair, and her mother, Patricia Cotham, a longtime Democratic county commissioner who lost her reelection bid in 2024 after her daughter’s party switch. 

She had spent about $309,000 on her campaign as of October 17, including almost $19,000 on TV ad production.

McCool raised almost $685,000 over the same period, his most recent filing shows. That’s a lot for a state legislative race here, but it pales in comparison to 2024. Nicole Sidman, Cotham’s opponent that year, raised $1.1 million in the third quarter alone. 

McCool’s donors include Leaders We Deserve, a PAC co-founded by gun control activist David Hogg to support young progressive candidates. The state Democratic Party made contributions worth more than $382,000.

Cotham’s political career began in 2007, when was appointed to the state House in the wake of a scandal. She was 28, the General Assembly’s youngest member. She served through 2016, when she made an ill-fated run for Congress. 

Cotham defeated Republican Tony Long to return to the state House in 2023 after a stint as a lobbyist and leader of a charter management organization that received a contract in the state’s short-lived experiment in taking over low-performing schools. Republican leaders made her chair of the Education Committee even before she joined their party. After the switch, she chaired Education Appropriations, too.