Rep. Robert Pittenger, a Republican seeking a fourth term representing his suburban Charlotte district, became the country’s first incumbent to lose this year in one of the state’s few competitive contests for Congress on Tuesday.
The winner of the primary in the state’s 9th Congressional District, conservative Charlotte pastor Mark Harris, had blasted Pittenger as insufficiently supportive of President Trump and criticized Pittenger’s support for February’s bipartisan budget deal. Pittinger also received support from Republicans in Washington, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Housing secretary Ben Carson.
The result is the latest example of Republican voters choosing pro-Trump outsiders over pro-Trump candidates backed by national political figures. Harris will face another political newcomer, Democrat Dan McCready, in November.
With no statewide race on the ballot for the first time since 2006, the real action of the night fell to a handful of House and local races. All other incumbents on the ballot won easily, including Mark Meadows, Walter Jones, and Virginia Foxx. North Carolina, often viewed as a swing state in presidential elections, has a Democratic governor and a veto-proof Republican legislature. Republicans control nine of 13 House seats and both Senate seats.
The state’s most closely watched race on Tuesday was in the 9th, Pittenger’s district, which is a largely rural and suburban district stretching along the state’s southern border between Charlotte and Fayetteville. Pittenger and Harris spent most of the race trying to out-Trump each other.
In a preview of the race in the April 30 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, writer Daniel Allott observed:
Pittenger and Harris have spent most of the primary campaign engaged in a tedious argument over exactly when each switched his allegiance from another Republican candidate to Trump during the 2016 primaries.
Regardless of when their loyalty to Trump began, both candidates say he is doing a stellar job as president. “Trump has met and exceeded what my expectations and hopes would have been for his presidency,” Harris told me in an interview at his home in Charlotte.
Pittenger, meanwhile, has been one of Trump’s top congressional advocates and defenders. He has called Trump’s leadership “extraordinary,” defended the president’s use of the term “shithole countries,” and dismissed allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia as tabloid fodder. In a January op-ed, Pittenger compared Trump to Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and “a diamond with many rough edges.” Trump “is the real thing, not a fake cubic zirconia,” Pittenger wrote. His campaign literature touts his “96% record of voting with President Trump!”
According to unofficial results, Harris won 48 percent of the vote to Pittenger’s 46 percent, or by about 800 votes. Two years ago, Pittenger eked out a 134-vote win over Harris.
November’s match-up between Harris and McCready could be competitive. McCready is a former Marine who could run well in the military-heavy eastern part of the district and has done well with fundraising. His biography says he served in Iraq, where he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River. Democrats will probably try to make the most of Harris’s social conservatism, which includes being pro-life and supporting HB2, North Carolina’s controversial “bathroom bill,” which has since been repealed.
Meanwhile, Democrats like to compare McCready to Conor Lamb, the Pennsylvania Democrat who won a special election in March in a Trump-heavy district. In NC-9, Pittenger won by 16 points in 2016. Trump carried it by 12. A Republican has held the seat since 1963.
North Carolina’s other competitive congressional race in November is in the 13th Congressional District, in the center of the state, west of Greensboro. There, first-term Republican incumbent Ted Budd will face Democrat Kathy Manning.
