Republican Tricia Cotham, NC lawmaker who switched parties, plans to seek reelection
State Rep. Tricia Cotham — the state lawmaker who famously switched parties in the middle of the last legislative session to give Republicans a supermajority in both chambers of the General Assembly — plans to seek reelection next year, according to Stephen Wiley, the caucus director for the House Republicans.
Cotham, who was a longtime Democrat when she ran for office in 2022, made national news in April when she changed party affiliation. Her move gave Republicans the last seat they needed to consistently override vetoes by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
Cotham informed Wiley recently that she plans to run in the newly redrawn House District 105 in southern Mecklenburg County, Wiley told WRAL on Friday. The district's makeup of voters leans Republican, but is expected to be close in 2024. Cotham didn't respond to requests for comment.
In a social media post Saturday morning, she confirmed her plans to seek reelection.
"After our prayers and talks, I’ve decided that I will seek re-election to keep representing Mecklenburg County and I look forward to meeting the voters of HD-105," Cotham posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Cotham's announcement ends months of speculation about her political future that began after she switched parties.
She lives in the 8th Congressional District, a safe Republican seat in the U.S. House of Representatives that's up for grabs next year. Rep. Dan Bishop, who represents the district, is running for state attorney general instead of seeking reelection to Congress. Cotham could have faced an uphill battle in a GOP primary for Congress, however, due to her long history as a Democratic politician.
As a Democrat, she served in the state House from 2009 to 2017 and then returned to the legislature in 2022 after winning a deep-blue Charlotte-area seat. Years of advocating for liberal causes, such as abortion access and LGBTQ rights, earned Cotham favor with Democratic voters in Mecklenburg County. It also helped that her mother, Pat Cotham, is a popular Democratic leader and Mecklenburg County Commissioner.
Cotham has said her decision to change parties in April came after receiving pushback from Democratic colleagues on her decision to skip a crucial vote on a bill to loosen gun restrictions, as well as her views on school choice that conflicted with the party line.
When she announced her switch to the GOP, she cited mistreatment and bullying from Democrats as a primary reason for her decision. Democrats have denied Cotham's claims and, in some cases, presented information to debunk them.
Cotham has since helped Republicans pass conservative legislation that might have otherwise failed without her support.
Despite her long history of pro-choice political rhetoric — including a speech at the legislature in 2015 during which she told the story of her own abortion and castigated Republicans for trying to control women with stricter abortion rules — Cotham cast the deciding vote earlier this year to severely restrict abortion access in North Carolina.
It passed with the bare minimum number of votes needed to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto. Abortion in North Carolina is now banned at 12 weeks in most circumstances, less than half of the time that had been allowed under the now-defunct Roe v. Wade standard.
That was perhaps the most dramatic example, given Cotham's total reversal on such a charged political debate. But it's far from the only area where her party switch has delivered Republicans the sort of political wins they likely would've failed to achieve previously.
In the months since Cotham provided the final vote needed for a GOP supermajority, Republicans have enacted other controversial new laws — strongly supported by Republicans but opposed by Democrats — to change election rules heading into 2024, seize power from the governor's office, funnel hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to private school families and regulate conversations between public school teachers and their students.
It has made Cotham a hero in GOP circles.
At the N.C. Republican Party's annual convention this summer, Cotham was routinely surrounded by new fans wanting to shake her hand or take a selfie, thanking her for the victories she let the GOP achieve by essentially rendering Cooper's vetoes powerless.
Cooper spent years successfully vetoing dozens of bills after Democrats broke the GOP supermajority in the 2018 elections. Republicans were never once able to muster the bipartisan support that would've been needed to override a veto. But since Cotham switched sides, not one of Cooper's vetoes has succeeded.
Cotham was rewarded in the new round of redistricting this fall, with a winding new district that snakes throughout southern Mecklenburg County to pick up as many conservative voters as possible, in an area that’s trending leftward.
Republican lawmakers were allowed this year, due to a recent ruling from the state Supreme Court, to redraw the state's political districts explicitly for political reasons. For Cotham, GOP leaders changed her district from one where just 38% of voters supported former Republican President Donald Trump in 2020 to a new version where Trump would've won 50.1% of the vote.
So while the district is Republican-leaning, it's also close enough that Cotham won't be guaranteed reelection in 2024. It'll be one of few competitive districts anywhere in the state, based on past election data. And Democrats are likely to push hard to unseat her.
