Will southeast Mecklenburg look past Cotham's switch?

Catch up quick: Cotham drew national attention last year when the elected Democrat changed her party affiliation to Republican, giving the GOP power to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes.

• Soon after, Cotham's vote was key in passing a bill to lower the state's cutoff for most abortions from 20 weeks to 12 weeks.

By the numbers: House District 105, a redrawn district, is 51.3% Republicans and 46.5% Democrats, according to the website Dave's Redistricting.

• While those numbers don't guarantee a slam dunk for Cotham, they present an uphill battle for Sidman — though she has raised four times as much as Cotham, the Observer reported.

Sidman says she has gone to every forum she was invited to and has never seen or met Cotham. Cotham did not respond to requests for an interview.

• "I don't know if it's just hope that the plus five Republican is enough that she doesn't have to present her views or herself to the voters," Sidman says.

The Democratic Party hopes voters are fired up enough to get to the polls and take away that red lead.

• But Stephen Wiley, caucus director for the state's House Republicans, says Cotham's party flip might not make much difference to the key swing voters.
• "In their minds, they switch parties every couple races on the ballot," he adds. "There's a lot of tickets splitting in southern Mecklenburg."

The other side: Samantha Paisley, of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, says voters aren't going to forget what happened in spring 2023.

• "It's such an explicit switch from one day you have abortion access and a spectrum of rights to the next day, you're seeing these rights being legislated away," she says.
• The DLCC has targeted nine House races in North Carolina, including Sidman's, to break the GOP supermajority. Sidman is getting support from Democrats statewide, including Gov. Cooper, who was a special guest at a campaign event for her in Raleigh.

Flashback: Voters already took their anger out on Cotham by ousting her mother, Pat Cotham, from the county board of commissioners. Pat Cotham has served as a Democrat on the board since 2012.

• But that was a countywide vote. And countywide, Mecklenburg leans blue.
• Tricia Cotham comes from a family of Democratic politicians. In 2007, the party handpicked her to replace disgraced House Speaker Jim Black. Cotham said at the time they wanted her to be "a new face for the Democratic Party."
• Over the years Cotham became known as a swing vote, willing to side with Republicans.

Sidman, an attorney, is somewhat of a newcomer to politics. She managed Christy Clark's House campaign in 2018, and she jumped into this race to challenge Cotham, once the district was redrawn to include her address.

"At the beginning when I was first running, and I would say, 'I'm running against Trisha Cotham' ... you could really see their eyes focused and they knew what that meant ... There's definitely a little bit of political fatigue at this point. Because I think there's just so much noise from everybody."

Zoom in: The two sides tell two distinct narratives about Cotham's party switch.

• Republicans frame Cotham as someone who works across the aisle. In a questionnaire for The Observer, Cotham wrote, "It is healthy to disagree with your own party, and I have shown that it is something I am not afraid to do."
• Democrats call Cotham's "record" a betrayal and a sign of dishonesty.
• But Sidman says she wants voters to be excited to vote for her, too. She says it's not just an "anti-Tricia campaign." They've knocked on over half the voters' doors in the district and made close to 100,000 phone calls, she tells Axios.

Sidman's platform hones in on public education. She opposes private school vouchers, which Cotham endorses. Sidman says abortion should be between a woman and her doctor.

• Being in a redrawn district, Sidman says she would advocate for a nonpartisan commission to ensure district maps are drawn fairly.

Cotham's campaign is focusing on crime. She was a sponsor of The Pretrial Integrity Act, which requires judges to set the pretrial release conditions for certain violent offenders, not magistrates. Cotham also voted to require sheriffs to comply with immigration and Customs Enforcement.

• The North Carolina Republican Party sent mailers that suggested Sidman would try to legalize hard drugs and prostitution.
• Wiley says a media outlet asked Sidman "if she did, in fact, support keeping heroin hookers on the streets. And she couldn't give a clear yes or no answer."
• Sidman says those claims are "obviously not remotely true." She adds, "They are now saying that I'm opposed to monitoring pedophiles with a satellite, which I can assure you is not an issue that I'm talking to anyone about."

What's next: Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.