A political rematch in the Triangle is shaping into an intensely competitive primary election as two Democrats with solidly liberal records seek to position themselves as the better choice to fight Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda in Washington.
The race has grabbed the attention of some of the most high-profile progressive officials, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who traveled to North Carolina Friday to endorse the challenger in the race in front of a crowd of hundreds at the Durham Convention Center.
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U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee is seeking a third term representing the state’s 4th Congressional District. To earn it, she’ll have to defeat a challenger she already beat once, in 2022: Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, who joined Sanders on Friday.
Allam first met Sanders in 2015 when she was a college student at N.C. State and spoke at one his rallies for his presidential campaign. She told WRAL in an interview Friday it was "surreal" that he's now the one coming to campaign for her.
"Working class folks in this country, we are endless," she said. "It's about lifting up those voices of working people and bringing them with us in this movement, bringing them to the ballot box, but also bringing their voices into the halls of Congress."
Sanders on Friday called Allam "a proven fighter with the courage to take on corporate power, to take on billionaires ... who think they can buy American democracy."
Foushee, in her reelection campaign, boasts the endorsement of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, former Gov. Roy Cooper and U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross, a Raleigh Democrat.
Foushee wasn't available to be interviewed, her campaign told WRAL, but her former state Senate colleague Floyd McKissick, a longtime Durham civil rights advocate and lawyer, said in an interview that she's the best person to represent the district in Congress. McKissick leads the Durham Committee for the Affairs of Black People, which has endorsed Foushee.
"She's strong; she's effective," McKissick said. "She has tremendous experience in local government, from school board to county commissioner to serving the state House and the State Senate. Congresswoman Foushee has an outstanding, impeccable reputation. It is a bit surprising that you would see a county commissioner in her second term deciding to take her on."
The heart of the district is Durham and Orange counties, two of the most politically progressive places in the South. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is almost guaranteed to win the general election and represent the state in Congress; only about 26% of the district’s voters backed Trump in the 2024 election.
That’s where Sanders comes in. The progressive independent from Vermont spoke in Durham Friday with Allam, seeking to boost enthusiasm for her campaign as early voting has begun. It’s billed as part of Sanders’ national "Fighting Oligarchy" tour.
"We are living today in an unprecedented moment in American history, and the most dangerous time in modern history," Sanders said, adding that the country needs politicians who are up to that moment.
In an interview after his speech, Sanders told WRAL that he has nothing against his congressional colleague, Foushee, but he just thinks Allam is better-suited to take on the wealthy interests he sees as trying to harm American democracy.
"We need people who have the courage and the boldness to take on Trumpism, to take on oligarchy and to fight for the working class," Sanders said. "And Nida's somebody I've known for a number of years, who I believe is prepared to do that."
As a Muslim and the child of immigrants, Allam said during her speech at Friday's rally, Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign reinvigorated her faith in the power of politics to help people.
"When he spoke about immigrants, he spoke to us not as outsiders, but as a part of his movement for socioeconomic justice and human dignity," she said.
Foushee has called for scaling back funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and instituting more accountability for immigration officials, but Allam said Friday that's not enough: "I am the only candidate in this race who has said, loud and clear, abolish ICE," Allam said to a standing ovation from the crowd.
The two women each have a record of voting for progressive stances — Allam in Durham County government and Foushee in her years of service in Congress, the state legislature and Orange County government. They’re each seeking to appeal to local voters in the primary who are angry with Trump and concerned by the broader state of American government and democracy.
Trump also spoke in North Carolina on Friday, in a visit to Fort Bragg. The president and first lady Melania Trump met at Pope Army Airfield with military families and members of the special forces who carried out an operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro.
Sanders said Friday that while his main political goal is taking power away from billionaires, he also believes the U.S. could make substantial progress if it spent less on the military.
"We are spending a trillion dollars a year on the military," he said. "Maybe, instead of spending a trillion dollars here, we can take some of that money and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing."
It's also a concern of Allam's, particularly U.S. aid to Israel, which she accuses of committing genocide against Palestinians with America's backing. Voter support for Israel has shifted, particularly among Democrats. Polls show that Americans are critical of how Israel has responded to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people. Israel has killed tens of thousands in response, according to estimates by the World Health Organization. A United Nations report alleges that Israel committed genocide by “killing and seriously harming unprecedented numbers of Palestinians,” while also blocking humanitarian aid and destroying the health care and education systems in Gaza.
"Folks are looking at this genocide and saying, 'This is where our taxpayer dollars are being sent? To bomb children, to destroy hospitals, to destroy schools?'" Allam told WRAL. "But then we're telling our educators here that we can't afford to pay you a living wage. ... Cancer patients are losing their homes having to pay for their cancer treatment. But we have endless amounts of money to spend on war."
Foushee beat Allam in 2022 due, in part, to millions of dollars in support from the Israel lobby. But this year, Foushee has promised not to take similar contributions.
2022 rematch
In 2022, Foushee defeated Allam by about 10 percentage points. And this time around, Foushee has several advantages she didn’t have in 2022: She’s been in Congress for several years now, able to point to her stances, and fields an experienced campaign team. Incumbent members of Congress rarely lose reelection for those reasons and more.
But Foushee also has one notable disadvantage compared to 2022: Money.
Much of the financial support that brought Foushee over the finish line originally isn’t expected to be there this time around. And Allam has put on a strong showing of grassroots support, kicking off the new year with a six-figure advantage over Foushee in their campaign bank accounts.
For local some Triangle-area Democratic Party leaders, Allam's grassroots support reflects that there's an enthusiasm around her campaign that Foushee hasn't been able to tap into.
"I'm not supposed to say this as the chair of the county party, but I'm going to be honest, I have started to lose faith in this party," Welsey Knott, chair of the Wake County Democratic Party, said Friday. "When I heard Nina was running, I felt that hope stirring up in my soul again. And y'all, for the first time in a long time, I'm truly hopeful again."
Follow the money
In the 2022 Democratic primary for this seat, outside groups spent more money on the race than all eight candidates combined. Foushee, Allam, former American Idol star Clay Aiken and other candidates made for a crowded primary that year to replace David Price, a longtime congressman who retired from office. Aiken is now backing Allam; he was at Friday's event with Sanders as well.
Foushee won after political action committees backed by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and the Israel lobby poured millions of dollars into ads on Foushee’s behalf.
But now Bankman-Fried is in prison for fraud, and Foushee has since sworn off the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group has fallen out of favor with some Democrats due to its support of Israel’s war in Gaza and AIPAC’s support of Republicans who defended the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.
McKissick told WRAL that the focus on AIPAC's past support of Foushee is overblown, saying she doesn't vote on issues based on who is backing her campaign or not. That goes for AIPAC or any other group, he said.
"She's a person of her word, has outstanding integrity," he said. "I think you look at her voting record, her voting record speaks volumes in terms of where she's been on issues. She's not been influenced by contributions from any group."
Allam disagrees.
"She's cashing checks from all the same companies as a MAGA Republican," Allam told the Sanders rally Friday. "Lockheed Martin, AstraZeneca, Raytheon and Meta and more. So when it comes to governing, how can she stand up to them?"
The two women are neck-and-neck in campaign fundraising — a rare position for an incumbent such as Foushee to be in against a challenger — after each having raised more than $300,000.
And Allam went into 2026 with more money left to spend. A main reason for that, however, is that Foushee already has a strong campaign apparatus. Allam, on the other hand, was building her campaign from scratch in the final month of the year.
Foushee’s campaign spent $244,000 on its operations in 2025, which was about 10 times more than Allam spent.
So as of Dec. 31, Allam had $306,000 cash on hand, compared to Foushee’s $194,000.
Who’s funding them
The latest campaign finance records end Dec. 31. The numbers may have changed in the months since, but in 2025 Foushee’s campaign brought in more money from political groups and corporate PACs than it did from individual people.
Foushee’s biggest supporters were PACs representing pilots, machinists, government workers, defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies and anesthesiologists.
Some of Foushee’s notable individual donors include former UNC Board of Trusteers members real estate developer Roger Perry and financier Sallie Shuping-Russel, former President Barack Obama’s personal aide Reggie Love, solar energy entrepreneur Richard Harkrader, civil rights lawyer Ted Shaw, and two top advisors to ex-governor Roy Cooper, Ken Eudy and L.T. McCrimmon.
Allam’s campaign is funded largely by small donors, but her biggest financial supporters are Durham businesswoman Rebecca Feinglos and five others from New York, California and Illinois. several politically progressive PACs. One of those is Leaders We Deserve, a group founded by gun control advocate David Hogg with the goal of electing young, progressive candidates. Allam is 32. Foushee is 69.
Shift in ad spending
While it was Foushee who benefitted from a blitz of outside ad spending by national political groups in 2022, this year it’s Allam who’s getting that attention.
Public records at the FCC show that Foushee has spent tens of thousands of dollars on local television ads for her campaign, but that no outside groups are running additional ads on her behalf on local television stations.
The opposite is true of Allam, who isn’t spending her own campaign cash on ads as national groups pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race on her behalf.
In addition to the $5,000 that Leaders We Deserve has given directly to Allam’s campaign, the group is also backing her campaign indirectly. It spent $231,000 on local TV ads in the past three weeks, according to FCC records.
Another pro-Allam group, called the American Priorities PAC, has spent at least $211,000 on local TV ads in the past three weeks for messaging that criticizes Foushee over her past support from AIPAC and the cryptocurrency industry.
There’s almost zero public information about the group, which only came into existence last week and has not yet filed reports showing who’s funding it or which other candidates it’s supporting. Its website offers no clues as to who runs the group or which political stances it favors, and messages to the email it listed with the federal government when registering as a PAC bounce back as undeliverable.