This fall, Beth Helfrich is fighting to retain a seat she flipped blue in 2024 from a former legislator who wants it back.
John Rhodes held the seat Helfrich currently holds in the North Carolina House of Representatives for District 98 — covering Cornelius, Davidson, and Huntersville — in the early 2000s. Now he’s running on a platform of ultra-conservative values to try to win it back.
The race is expected to be a close one. Here’s more about each candidate, their political track records and what platforms they are running on:
Beth Helfrich
In 2023, Helfrich watched online as the General Assembly passed a 12-week abortion ban. She said in an interview that as a mother of five, she valued the right to choose — and this became one of the factors that influenced her decision to run.
“In that moment, I felt firsthand how, without checks and balances, the legislature can operate like a runaway train. I wanted the people of my district to feel served and heard, not ignored and at the mercy of a supermajority's political priorities,” she told The Election Hub.
She said that, as the leader of her local public school’s PTA, she also wanted to champion education funding in the House.
During her first term in office, Helfrich was the primary sponsor for a bill that would have used $390M of the earmarked money for school vouchers to instead reduce the state’s waitlist for subsidized childcare. She also authored bills that protect IVF.
Helfrich was the primary sponsor for legislation that would have forced data centers to pay for their own water and power without hiking up utilities for ratepayers.
She also broke with much of her party to support Iryna’s Law, the sweeping criminal justice reform bill drafted in reaction to the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on the Lynx Blue Line in Charlotte. Some Democrats opposed the bill because of the last-minute amendment added by Republican Phil Berger that allows for extra death penalty methods to be employed if lethal injection is unavailable. Helfrich said that she supported the bill because Zarutska’s family had asked her to, and because it funded 10 additional assistant district attorneys for Mecklenburg County’s understaffed court system.
She also co-sponsored the PAVE Act, the bill responsible for putting the transit tax referendum on the 2025 ballot.
“Not only will we benefit from major investments in our rail and bus systems, but our three towns will also receive over $100 million over the next five years for local transportation projects as a result of the referendum,” she said.
On the campaign trail, she’s also touting her high record of votes in the General Assembly. When the punitive Interstate 77 toll lane measure was added to the budget over the summer, Helfrich voted against it. She says she missed the budget’s third reading because her mother was having surgery, but would have again voted no.
A decade ago, a similar project — the I-77 North toll lanes — was built through Cornelius and the Lake Norman area. Helfrich says residents there are still upset about it.
“When communities feel that significant projects have been forced upon them despite vocal opposition, they will remain angry for years to come,” she said. “I’m committed to being a very loud squeaky wheel on behalf of my constituents.”
John Rhodes
Rhodes, a real estate agent who owns Rhodes Realty in Lake Norman, started his political career as a Cornelius Town Commissioner in the early 2000s, serving half of his term before resigning to serve in the North Carolina House of Representatives’ District 98 seat from 2003-2007. He was unopposed in the general election both times he won.
In 2007, he lost the Republican primary to a novice politician at the time — Thom Tillis. Tillis crushed him, getting 63% of the vote to Rhodes’ 37%. But Rhodes’ political ambitions didn’t end there. Leading up to the 2014 election, he qualified to be a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate.
Now Tillis, who rose through the ranks to become a U.S. Senator, is leaving politics — and Rhodes is hoping for another chance in the General Assembly.
He’s invoking a sense of nostalgia to try to propel his campaign, with social media posts about quieter times in Cornelius before rapid growth and development.
But he’s also harkening back to his days in the District 98 seat, including how he was the first to call for the resignation of Democratic Speaker Jim Black, who eventually resigned and pleaded guilty to a federal corruption charge. That scandal led to Republicans picking up more seats in the General Assembly.
Rhodes is also running on his opposition to unpopular interstate toll lane projects, breaking with other Republicans who supported the punitive measure in this year’s state budget. He says if elected, he’ll “challenge the I-77 toll lanes and work for general purpose lanes,” according to some of his campaign materials, and says he will “review and assess the tolling of I-77 and exorbitant fees.” In the past, he opposed the toll lane projects running through Cornelius.
Rhodes, a former Mecklenburg County Medic and Cornelius firefighter, is also campaigning on support for public safety, and advocated for Iryna’s Law when it was passing through the General Assembly. In a Facebook post, he blamed Democrats for policies he believes contributed to Zarutska’s death, calling them the “(D)eath, (D)arkness, and (D)estruction crowd.”
Rhodes is also running on other conservative viewpoints, like being a “fiscal conservative” and opposing tax increases, as well as conservative social views like opposing “men in women’s sports” and “males in female’s restrooms and locker rooms,” according to his website.
He is also opposed to abortion in all circumstances, according to an iVoterGuide questionnaire he filled out. In that questionnaire, he also says he believes all undocumented immigrants should be deported, calling them “illegal invaders,” and that the United States should enact policies to “ban any further Muslims from entering the United States and deportation of the same.” He also said that climate change was “a hoax” that is “all about creating a false sense of fear to control other’s behavior,” and that he does not believe there should be any restrictions on gun ownership.
Rhodes has also made his opinions known this election season. In a clash with an anti-Trump protester standing outside Cornelius Town Hall during early voting, he said he believed Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
Rhodes did not respond to a request for an interview for this story, or to a list of questions.
This race could be close, as District 98 has more registered Republican voters than it does Democrats. But unaffiliated voters outnumber them both, and Democrats in races like Helfrich’s are banking on their support at the ballot box this year.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
Additional reading from The Election Hub on notable races in the region:
- In southern Mecklenburg, a Gen Z-er hopes to unseat an incumbent he once admired
- In pivotal south Charlotte Senate rematch, Bradley and McGinn clash over records
- In Gaston County’s Riverbend Township, an unlikely candidate is making waves
- Meet LaKesha Womack, the first-time candidate challenging Tim Moore
Rachel Black is a reporter and writer for The Election Hub. Reach her at rachel@theelectionhub.org.