With NC voting districts redrawn, what will Triangle representatives do in 2024?
Two Democrats who represent parts of the Triangle in Congress, Reps. Valerie Foushee (D-Orange) and Deborah Ross (D-Wake) will run for reelection in 2024, in new districts enacted last week as part of North Carolina's latest redistricting efforts.
Foushee, 67, announced her reelection plans Monday morning, saying she hopes to help Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year's elections. Ross, 60, announced her own reelection plans last week.
"From preventing gun violence to ensuring access to abortion and taking action to protect our planet from climate change, we have urgent priorities that demand bold solutions," Foushee wrote in her campaign announcement.
The 2024 plans of the third Triangle representative, Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-Wake), are less certain.
He currently represents a tossup district — including the western and southern Wake County suburbs, Johnston County and parts of Harnett and Wayne counties — that he won by about 3% of the vote in 2022. But for 2024 the new lines put Nickel's home into Ross' district, and will turn his own district into a heavily Republican seat that would likely be impossible for a Democrat to win, by losing most of the Wake County suburbs and instead extending to several rural counties on the Virginia border.
Nickel, 47, has called for gerrymandering lawsuits to challenge the new maps, which he criticized for eliminating his formerly competitive seat. In the meantime he has yet to say what he might do in next year's elections.
The new maps pack even more Democratic voters into Foushee's and Ross' already safely Democratic districts, in order to turn Nickel's district into one a future Republican will be heavily favored to win.
All told, the maps take what's currently an even 7-7 split between Republicans and Democrats in the state's U.S. House of Representatives delegation, and will turn it into at least a 10-4 split favoring Republicans, and possibly an 11-3 advantage.
