Three Races to Watch in Roy Cooper’s Backyard

If there’s one place to watch for a hint of how the midterm elections will play out in North Carolina in November, it might be Nash County.

The county east of Raleigh voted for nine of the 10 candidates who won statewide Council of State races in 2024, and has gone the way of the U.S. Senate victor in seven of the last eight election cycles.

This year, Nash County is home to three state legislative races that could determine the balance of power in the General Assembly. It’s also the backyard of former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate—a Nashville, NC native who has never lost a race.

Cooper has returned to his old stomping grounds three times this election cycle to campaign against Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley in a race that has drawn national headlines and tens of millions of dollars in political spending.

But North Carolina insiders are also closely watching the county’s state legislative candidates. Republicans almost certainly need to win the Nash County races to hang onto their state Senate supermajority and regain a veto-proof margin in the House. Democrats, meanwhile, think they can gain ground in the county and, if the election turns into a nationwide blue wave, potentially even win control of a chamber.

“Nash County has been a pretty good predictor of elections in the past,” Cooper told The Assembly recently. “It has voted for both Republicans and Democrats, and it has often tended to be right in its projection of who’s going to win. Often, you need to look at Nash County people to see what they’re thinking.”

Here’s a look at the races to watch in this area.

It’s the Economy

Interviews with voters across the county show that they’re ticked off about the economy.

A scathing audit earlier this year uncovered years of financial mismanagement in Rocky Mount, which was once a banking hub and is now home to about 40% of the county’s 100,000 residents. (Parts of Rocky Mount are in Edgecombe County.) To get the budget under control, Rocky Mount officials announced that they’d need to cut spending by at least $30 million over a 10-month period. They’ve since laid off dozens of city employees and raised property taxes and utility rates.

National issues came up in interviews, too. Marsha Walker, who was waiting on an Amtrak platform to visit her daughter in Virginia, said she moved from California to Rocky Mount because she wanted to be closer to her family but couldn’t afford a home further north. But since moving here, she said, health care costs have strained her finances.

“I’m trying to make this red state blue,” she said. “I want [North Carolina] to be more progressive with health care for everyone.”

Gerald Daniels of Whitakers said he’s fared well as an electrician, but he’s concerned about rising insurance rates. Daniels, a registered Republican who spoke to The Assembly outside a Dollar General in the farming community of Red Oak, blames Cooper for not doing more to bring costs down. 

“Once you have so many years in, you become complacent,” Daniels said. “You begin to think that things bend to your way. Roy Cooper, he said he’s been in the system for 40 years. Well, he doesn’t need to be in the Senate then.”

Of the roughly 72,000 people in Nash County who are registered to vote, 38% are unaffiliated, 34% are Democrats, and 27% are Republicans. Among registered voters who reported their race, nearly 54% are white and 41% are Black.

The Other Senate Battleground

Democrats need to gain one seat this year to break the supermajority in the state Senate. There’s no better pickup opportunity for them than the Nash County seat held by GOP Sen. Lisa Stone Barnes.

Barnes is no stranger to competitive races. She won reelection in 2024 by less than 2.6 points under the current voting map, which also includes all of Vance and Franklin counties in her district.

But she’s facing more headwinds this year. President Donald Trump, who energizes conservatives, isn’t on the ballot in the midterms, and her opponent has political experience. James Gailliard, a pastor, served in the state House from 2019 to 2023, overlapping with Barnes for part of that period.

Gailliard is campaigning as someone who won’t rubberstamp his party’s priorities. In the legislature, he occasionally found himself in Cooper’s crosshairs by supporting abortion restrictions, including a bill to penalize medical professionals who allow babies that survive abortions to die. Gailliard backed the bill when it was initially considered in 2019, but he didn’t side with Republicans when they unsuccessfully tried to override Cooper’s veto. 

In an interview, he expressed support for restricting athletic participation by transgender youth. He also said he doesn’t have concerns with reducing the primary election voting period from 17 days to 10 days—a key tenet of a bill that Gov. Josh Stein recently vetoed.

Despite his independent streak, Gailliard said he wouldn’t override any of Stein’s vetoes if elected.

“You get the most back to your district when you stick with your caucus,” Gailliard said. “I’m committed to sticking with my governor, but I’m also going to take hard votes. I’m not going to be the guy that overrides the governor.”

He also says he’d prioritize public school funding and replacing the state’s flat income tax system with a tiered structure that offers more relief to lower-income residents.

For her part, Barnes has consistently stuck with the GOP on contentious issues. She hasn’t defected from the majority in any of the 428 votes she’s taken this session, legislative records show. And in the 2023-2024 session, she sided with the majority in all but one of 603 votes.

Barnes said she was most proud of the latest state budget, which cut personal income tax rates and gave substantial pay increases to teachers and law enforcement and nearly $49 million for farmland preservation grants. She said she’s been hearing from constituents who are worried about their utility bills, and she plans to prioritize that in the legislature.

“I’m proud of supporting my rural communities and agriculture,” Barnes said. “When they were not getting answers at the local level, they came to me and I listened to them.”

Gailliard took aim at the Barnes family’s agriculture business, Barnes Family Farms Corp., a large sweet potato grower based in Spring Hope. He pointed out that two farmworkers died working for the business in recent years. (An autopsy later found that one of the workers likely died due to a tumor.)

“Yeah, she’s in agriculture, but there’s been two deaths on her farm in the last three years, and so there’s so many other areas that I think should cause red flags for the voter,” Gailliard said.

He added, “The business got ran into receivership, so it’s questionable how good a business person they are.”

Barnes declined to comment, noting that the business was owned by her late husband, who died in 2025. In late 2024, a court-appointed receiver took control after the farm defaulted on $40 million in loans from a Dutch bank. Barnes’ son, Josh, now serves as the business’s president. She has highlighted her agriculture ties on the campaign trail, though, standing in front of a tractor in one ad.

Barnes said that after her husband died, she found hope through her work in a women’s ministry, which includes discipleship classes at a women’s prison in Raleigh. 

“I have a special place in my heart for women who have struggled, who have been in difficult situations, and really want to be involved with helping them to succeed,” she said.

The two opponents, for all their political differences, share that reliance on faith. Gailliard’s oldest son, Kyol, died in a car accident in 2014.

“As a man of faith, I know how hard life is with my faith,” Gailliard said. “I can’t imagine how you survive this world without it.”

Gailliard entered July with nearly $121,000 to Barnes’ $188,000. 

A Testy Rematch

On the House side, Democratic Rep. Dante Pittman and Republican Rep. Allen Chesser are two of the most vulnerable incumbents in the state. House Republicans are one seat short of a supermajority, so both seats are seen as critical by the two parties.

Chesser faces a rematch with a Democrat he defeated in 2024 by less than 1 percentage point—one of three House contests across the state that fell within that recount threshold.

Chesser, a combat veteran and former police officer, said he decided to run for office in response to COVID-era restrictions. When his pregnant wife went to the doctor’s office in 2020, she learned their daughter would be stillborn. Chesser wasn’t allowed to be in the room when she got the news due to the restrictions.

“I had to find out through a text message that we weren’t going to bring our daughter home,” Chesser said. “I believe there are limits on government, and this is one of them. Government doesn’t get to tell me how to be a father, doesn’t get to tell me how to be a husband, and it doesn’t get to strip away our humanity.”

Since taking office in 2023, he’s pushed for changes to the child welfare system. After having a foster care application denied because he already had five children, he introduced a bill to create an exception so families in similar circumstances could be licensed to provide care for one foster child or a sibling group if they meet all other requirements. Chesser’s Loving Homes Act passed both chambers unanimously and had then-Gov. Cooper’s support. Chesser’s family has since become licensed to foster.

Lorenza Wilkins, who co-founded a youth center and previously worked in human resources for the city of Rocky Mount, is looking to oust Chesser. He argues the legislature has become too fixated on entrenching its own power and bolstering utility companies rather than prioritizing the needs of the district. 

Wilkins points to Chesser’s support of Senate Bill 266, which removed a goal of a 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and allows Duke Energy to charge ratepayers upfront before new nuclear and gas plant construction projects are completed.

“Those costs are being passed on to residents as we speak,” Wilkins said. “Not having to continue with the actual emissions reduction is causing an increase in fuel prices.”

Chesser said he’s worked to reign in costs, noting he supported a local bill in June that established the Rocky Mount Public Utilities Advisory Committee to work with city council members on utility matters. He said he wants to ensure “the local citizens have a voice over how the county or the city is spending the money that is derived from the utility rates.”

Wilkins said his legislative priorities would be increasing funding for public schools and lowering utility bill rates. Asked if he’d ever support overriding Stein’s vetoes, Wilkins replied, “I don’t foresee a situation where that could happen.”

Chesser argues Nash County is well served with him in a GOP-led House, arguing he’d have more say in the budget process and be more effective than Wilkins in bringing money back to the district. He also argues Wilkins has been too critical of the Republicans he’d likely serve under if he were elected.

“Without a voice at the table, you can’t empower anyone,” Chesser said. “That is one of the things that I try to bring for the people of Nash County that they haven’t had in a long time. The divisive tactics that [Wilkins] has shown through the campaign will not benefit him well within this body.”

Chesser’s campaign had more than $116,000 in available cash through June, less than Wilkins’ $136,000. 

A Slice of Nash

Pittman’s district includes all of neighboring Wilson County and 5% of the population of Nash. The Democrat ousted an incumbent Republican by 2.2 percentage points in 2024 and now faces a challenge of his own from Blake Boykin, who chairs the Wilson County Board of Education.

Boykin, a Wilson County native and homebuilder, declined an interview but he has made housing costs a central priority of his campaign.

“Over the past several months, we’ve met so many wonderful people across Wilson and Nash counties,” he wrote on Facebook this month. “No issue has come up more often than property taxes. … I’ll fight for common-sense property tax relief and protections for North Carolina homeowners.”

Pittman, meanwhile, has made public education a priority. He backed the state budget, which included sizable pay raises for starting teachers. He’s also celebrated earmarks for his district, including $12 million for Wilson Community College to build a biologics training center, $500,000 for Barton College’s nursing and primary care program, $440,000 for the Contentnea Volunteer Fire Department, and $200,000 for the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf’s summer camp.

Pittman has set himself on solid financial footing, entering July with more than $281,000 in available cash to nearly $164,000 for Boykin (which includes a $100,000 personal loan).

At times, Pittman has taken tough votes that have put him in the crosshairs of his party, including supporting a law requiring public school districts to publish a list of book titles. The law also lets parents block their children from borrowing specific books and allows them to cite their religious beliefs to remove their child from activities and discussions. 

While Pittman backed the bill when it was initially considered on the House floor, he opposed overriding Stein’s veto. 

He said his opinion of the bill changed when he learned that a provision preventing public funds from being used for youth gender transition procedures was already part of a 2023 law.

“Public dollars should not be for private surgeries,” Pittman said. “After the vote, I got to looking into more of the bill and found out that’s already illegal in North Carolina and there were some provisions that really went too far. My record shows that I’m willing to work with anybody as long as it’s common sense.”

Pittman didn’t rule out overriding gubernatorial vetoes if he’s reelected, though. “The standard is: does it work for the people of Wilson and Nash counties?” he said. “When it does, I take action accordingly, and when it doesn’t, I have to vote no.”