Only one of the 13 state House members from Mecklenburg County is a Republican: Tricia Cotham.
Two years ago, Democrats ran a grudge-match campaign against her after she left them in the spring of 2023 to join the Republican Party.
Cotham still narrowly won reelection against Democrat Nicole Sidman. She escaped by 213 votes, or one-third of a percentage point, in a district Kamala Harris narrowly won. Her district covers Mint Hill, Matthews and parts of south Charlotte.
This year, Democrats are trying a different approach by focusing on inflation and not re-litigating the past.
They have a new candidate, former Matthews Commissioner Ken McCool.
“But I think now the election is about costs,” McCool said. “It’s about public schools. It’s about fixing the wrongs of 15 years of General Assembly rule.”
McCool, who is 28, was first elected to the Matthews Commission when he was 21.
“I have a record I am running on in Matthews,” he said. “I was reelected twice. Folks liked the leadership we had. What I have told people is that the state should be run a little more like Matthews. Pass a budget on time and do good things. We could focus on her party switch, but that’s not going to help working-class families.”
McCool campaigned Wednesday with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and other Democratic candidates at a grocery store in east Charlotte. And Cotham wasn’t mentioned.
Democratic candidates are laser-focused on talking about bringing costs down, even if they sometimes don’t have specific plans. They believe the national mood against Republicans gives them momentum. Voters just need to be reminded that the GOP is in charge, both in Washington and at the General Assembly in Raleigh, they believe.
“Things are not going well,” he said. “(Republicans) are now addressing the gas tax when it’s three weeks until the election. They have had 15 years to address these issues and they are waiting until the last second to try and fix it when polling numbers don’t look very positive.”
Cotham declined to be interviewed for this story.
In her most recent term, she championed Iryna’s Law, which makes it harder for magistrates and judges to release people with lengthy criminal records who have been arrested multiple times.
The law is named for Iryna Zarutska, who was murdered on Charlotte’s light-rail line in August 2025.
“He should have never been allowed out of the jail,” Cotham said in a speech in the General Assembly last year. She was talking about DeCarlos Brown, who has been charged with the killing. “The catch and release practices for violent offenders will end today.”
Cotham has tried to characterize McCool as being soft on crime.
Perhaps Cotham’s biggest accomplishment this legislative term was sponsoring the bill that allowed Mecklenburg County to increase the sales tax by one penny to pay for a multi-billion-dollar transportation plan.
“(The bill) provides the framework for voters to decide if they want the opportunity to improve transportation issues in our very highly populated and dense region of Mecklenburg County,” she said in Raleigh.
Republican leadership made Cotham the centerpiece of the legislation.
Her efforts pleased the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, which thanked her.
But the transit tax act angered some in Matthews, which is in her district, because it didn’t provide enough money for the Silver Line light rail to reach the town.
Republican lawmakers redrew Cotham’s district specifically for her, including the most conservative precincts of south Charlotte. But given the president’s low approval ratings, she has little margin of error: No Republican House member won their seat by a smaller margin.
