It seems that the only thing a pair of top congressional candidates can agree on is that they spoke last week.
From there, state Sen. Bobby Hanig and Army veteran Laurie Buckhout have wildly different accounts of a phone call the two shared.
Hanig and Buckhout are among five Republicans running in the primary for the 1st Congressional District, vying for the chance to take on Democratic Rep. Don Davis in a recently redrawn northeastern district.
Buckhout narrowly lost to Davis last year, but she took a cyber defense job in the Trump administration in March and seemed unlikely to run again. Instead, she endorsed Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson.
Hanig announced in September that he planned to run, and businessman Eric Rouse, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck, and divorce attorney Ashley-Nicole Russell also announced bids.
But Buckhout’s calculus seemed to change in the fall as Rocky Mount fell into financial turmoil. GOP lawmakers also redrew congressional voting lines as part of a nationwide push by President Donald Trump, making the 1st District friendlier to Republicans than in 2024.
When Roberson decided to drop out, Buckhout effectively switched places with him. Buckhout said she went in for a routine interview with White House officials (not Trump) to discuss her prospective candidacy. On the way back, Buckhout told The Assembly on Friday, she called Rouse, Buck, and Hanig to give them a head’s up before the candidate withdrawal deadline that she was about to enter the race.
That seems to be where the problems started with Buckhout and Hanig.
In an interview with The Assembly on Friday, Hanig said Buckhout offered him a position as her chief of staff if he’d drop out of the race.
“She asked me, ‘How would you feel about stepping aside, becoming my chief of staff, and the heir apparent to [the 1st Congressional District]?’” he said. “That is what she asked me plain and simple. And then I commenced to tell her, ‘Laurie, I have been in this race four months. I have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have 165 volunteers. I have a freight train and momentum behind me. I’m in it to win.’”
Buckhout said on Friday that’s not what happened. She said that Hanig expressed regret for getting in the race in the first place and that she took pity on him. Hanig has run afoul of state Senate leadership over his opposition to a proposed ban on shrimp trawling, and running for reelection seemed like a risky proposition.
“He said, ‘I wish I would have dropped out. And if I had known you were coming in the race, I wouldn’t have run at all,’” Buckhout recalled. “I sort of felt sorry for the guy. I said, ‘Can I help you out?’ I mean, I can give you a job if you need one.’”
“I thought he needed lifting up,” she continued. “I didn’t offer him chief of staff, but I said, ‘Hey, I could have a lot things open, to include chief of staff.’”
Hanig told The Assembly that Buckhout “is a liar.” He also questioned her fitness for office due to her lingering health issues.
Buckhout posted to social media that she didn’t run for Congress in part because of what she described as “severe damage to my kidneys from burn pit exposure in Iraq,” the Albemarle Observer reported in May.
Buckhout said Friday, though, that she’s received excellent healthcare and is more than up to the rigor of campaigning and holding office.
“I’m a wounded warrior,” she said. “When I was up in D.C., I got some great care as a senior appointee in the administration…They pinpointed the issue, which nobody had really noticed for years. I’m really feeling fantastic and fired up. My trademark energy is back.”
Hanig questions whether it’s the medical treatment that revived Buckhout’s energy.
“The miracle cure was redistricting,” he said.