Challengers launch contests against Democratic Party's problem children

State of play: Republicans hold a supermajority in North Carolina's state Senate, but are one vote short in the House, meaning they only need to recruit one Democrat to override Democratic Gov. Josh Stein's vetoes.

• The GOP has been able to do that relatively easily with a couple of Charlotte-area Democrats they've come to rely on.
• "We shouldn't have been in that position. We shouldn't come down to one vote on everything," Wesley Harris, Mecklenburg County Democrats chair, told Axios in an October interview.

Case in point: Both Reps. Nasif Majeed and Carla Cunningham, along with Rocky Mount Rep. Shelly Willingham, made headlines for supporting Senate Bill 266, which weakened mandates on Duke Energy to cut carbon emissions.

• The same day, Cunningham joined Republicans in supporting House Bill 318, which further required sheriffs to cooperate with ICE. Defending her position, she made a controversial speech that offended some members of her party, declaring, "All cultures are not equal."
• Meanwhile, Majeed, citing "moral issues," backed House Bill 805, which bundled policies the LGBTQ community considered attacks, such as allowing lawsuits against medical providers who perform gender transitions.

By the numbers: Cunningham votes with the GOP majority 84% of the time in the 2025-2026 session, while Majeed's record is 71%, according to voting statistics.

• Neither responded to requests for comment.

Flashback: This all comes amid rising distrust within the party, since Rep. Tricia Cotham's high-profile 2023 party switch, which handed the GOP a supermajority and enough votes to tighten abortion restrictions.

• Democrats ran an expensive 2023 campaign to oust Cotham, but failed by a few hundred votes.

Reality check: It isn't Democrats in competitive districts who are overruling these vetoes recently, but those who sit in safe, deep blue districts, North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton told Axios.

• The state party doesn't endorse in the primaries, but Clayton says she'll work to educate voters on which Democrats voted against Stein's agenda.
• The party encourages Democratic lawmakers to vote with the governor's agenda, she added, but if they don't, they're not guaranteed party resources.

Between the lines: Harris says the Mecklenburg County party is remaining neutral. He does not believe they should recruit against incumbents.

• "It's up to the constituents to hold her accountable for her positions," Harris said of Cunningham.

Yes, but: That may be a lot to ask of voters, political professor Chris Cooper says. Fewer than one in five North Carolinians could identify top legislators like former House speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, according to a Meredith College poll.

• "Clearly, the Democratic Party elites are dissatisfied with both of them," Cooper says. "The question is whether that elite dissatisfaction is going to be communicated to the average voter who can't pick their state legislator out of a lineup."

• A splashy endorsement — like that of Gov. Josh Stein's — could be enough to catch voters' attention, sway the primaries and reprimand the incumbents. Stein, who's supporting Rep. Rodney Pierce in the northeast, has shown he's willing to back candidates in the primaries.
• Cooper suspects even if the party isn't formally endorsing, they're likely working behind the scenes with third-party organizations such as Carolina Forward, a left-leaning advocacy group.

For Cunningham's District 106 seat, the seven-term representative faces two challengers.

• Rodney Sadler, a Baptist minister, says Cunningham "opened the door" for Border Patrol to come to Charlotte through the passage of House Bill 318.
• Vermanno Bowman is back to challenge Cunningham, as he did in the 2024 primary, when he lost with just 15% of the vote. He says he ran before because he noticed Cunningham's voting track record. Specifically, she overrode a veto on the bill fully funding Opportunity Scholarships, the state's private school voucher program.

In District 99, four-term Rep. Nasif Majeed faces challenges from Democratic candidates Tucker Neal and Veleria Levy.

• Levy boasts on her campaign website that she has experience fighting bills that target "trans youth, reproductive freedom, and access to care."

The bottom line: Democrats are hoping to ride the anti-Trump wave of 2025 into 2026, winning back seats like Cotham's and retaining others, without the party appearing to meddle in the primaries.

• Cooper says there's a "larger tension about whether the job of the party is to support the most viable candidate, or whether the job of the party is to be agnostic until the primary is over."