Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop won reelection in the 9th Congressional District Tuesday night, leading Democratic challenger Cynthia Wallace roughly 56% to 44% on Tuesday night, according to preliminary results from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Bishop, a Charlotte attorney and social conservative, held in his Election Night party in heavily Republican Union County.
"The people are showing up for America, ladies and gentlemen," Bishop said. "So, I wanna say, we entered that race last year in that special election, and lots of people in this room worked and worked and faced down the nay-sayers."
Bishop is a former Mecklenburg County commissioner and state senator. As a member of the General Assembly, he was a co-sponsor of House Bill 2, the so-called “bathroom bill” that required people to use the bathroom in government-owned buildings that matches that gender on their birth certificate. That law was later overturned.
The district runs from south Charlotte to Robeson County.
Last year, a three-judge panel ordered the General Assembly to redraw the state’s congressional and state legislative maps.
As a result, the 9th was tweaked, becoming slightly more Democratic. President Trump won the old 9th District by just under 11 percentage points in 2016.
Two years ago, the 9th District was one of the most high-profile races in the nation as Democrats tried to retake the House of Representatives.
Democrats failed to win that seat twice, after spending millions.
Dan McCready lost a close race to Mark Harris in the 2018 midterms, but the State Board of Elections voted for a second election because of alleged absentee mail ballot fraud by a Republican political operation. In a 2019 special election, Bishop defeated McCready.
"I think it's safe to say we sealed the deal," Bishop said Tuesday night.
After those two losses, national Democrats declined to spend money this year in the 9th. They instead focused their money and energy in the 8th District, which runs from Cabarrus County to Cumberland County.
Wallace works in financial services in Charlotte. She is the former Democratic Party chair for the 9th District.
For both candidates, it was difficult to cut through the noise of the presidential election and the high-profile U.S. Senate race between Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Cal Cunningham.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wallace only did a little in-person campaigning. She advertised on cable TV and social media, but the race did not capture voters' attention as the 9th District did two years ago.
Because of that court-ordered redraw of the congressional maps, Democrats picked up two seats on Tuesday.
Democrat Kathy Manning won in the 6th District in Greensboro and Democrat Deborah Ross won the 2nd District in Raleigh.
Going into the election, Republicans held a 10-3 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. Because of those two wins, Democrats will at least have five seats from North Carolina in Congress.
