Republican Tricia Cotham appears to have narrowly won reelection to a highly contested state House seat in southeast Mecklenburg, based on Tuesday night election returns. After Cotham switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP last year, Democrats made defeating her a top priority.
Cotham and Sidman’s race is the most closely watched in the General Assembly this year. Cotham sent shockwaves through North Carolina politics in 2023 with her surprise switch from Democrat to Republican. That gave Republicans a long-coveted supermajority in both the N.C. House and Senate, allowing them to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes at will.
Cotham supported Republican overrides enabling new abortion restrictions after 12 weeks, hundreds of millions of dollars in public spending on private school vouchers, and other GOP priorities.
Her switch was especially shocking because of the long history of the Cotham name in Mecklenburg County Democratic Party circles. Her mother, Pat Cotham, is a longtime Democratic county commissioner. Tricia Cotham also gained national attention in 2015 with an emotional speech on the floor of the N.C. House detailing her own experience with having an abortion for medical reasons.
Republicans redrew Cotham’s district in Mint Hill and east Charlotte to make it more favorable to a Republican, but the new District 105 remained a toss-up seat.
Sidman’s strategy focused on highlighting Cotham’s alleged betrayal and the policy impacts, such as abortion restrictions, that her switch had on the state.
Cotham sought to tie Sidman, who works at Temple Beth El in Charlotte, to left-wing positions with a series of TV ads and mailers that, based on her answers to previous candidate questionnaires about criminal reform, said she wants “to legalize prostitution and hardcore drugs like heroin and meth.”
Democrats poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race to defeat her.
But with all precincts in, Cotham was leading Democratic challenger Nicole Sidman by 278 votes Tuesday night, or a half of a percentage point.
Mecklenburg Democrats did have some good news. Beth Helfrich won a north Mecklenburg state House seat that had been held by a Republican. She defeated former Huntersville Mayor Melinda Bales.
"We built a people-powered scrappy and powerful grassroots campaign. And I am proud of it. And it was always focused on really connecting with people in District 98 and what they have to say and what matters most to them," Helfrich said.
And in a south Charlotte state Senate race, Democrat Woodson Bradley held a 27-vote lead over Republican challenger Stacie McGinn —a race that could be decided by provisional ballots in the coming days.
