Balkcom will go up against Democrat Jamie Ager, a farmer who has been waging a strong campaign to flip a constituency in the western part of the state that Donald Trump carried 54-45 in 2024.
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Balkcom enters the race free of the ethical baggage that sank Edwards, who dropped out shortly after the House Ethics Committee recommended he be censured after finding “substantial reason to believe” he had sexually harassed two young female aides and created a hostile workplace.
But Balkcom, who was first elected to the legislature in 2022, has just 84 days to put together a credible campaign for what remains a competitive general election. While Trump decisively carried this district, which is home to Asheville and surrounding rural areas, his mounting unpopularity has given Democrats across the country an opening in comparatively conservative seats.
Ager, whose grandfather, Jamie Clarke, represented the 11th District for three non-consecutive terms in the 1980s, has also been waging a serious effort to flip it.
“Farming’s a real job: You screw up, there are real consequences,” Ager said last summer in a launch video. “And even when you think this will be the year, sometimes mother nature has other plans,” he continued as the screen showed the devastating floods from Hurricane Helene in 2024.
A different sort of storm upended Ager’s race, too.
The 11th District appeared to be an unlikely Democratic target when he kicked off his campaign, but he began gaining traction even before the allegations against Edwards first started surfacing in April.
The House Majority PAC gave Ager a big vote of confidence earlier that month when it announced that it had reserved more than $4 million in ad time in western North Carolina. And though he’s a first-time candidate, Ager has been a potent fundraiser, ending June with more than $2 million in the bank.
If Ager defeats Balkcom this fall, he would be the first Democrat in 14 years to represent what had once been one of the most competitive House districts in the nation.
Indeed, Ager’s grandfather won and lost a string of five extremely close elections all decided by under 2 points. Clarke’s career finally came to an end after the 1990 election when Republican Charles Taylor, whom Clarke had narrowly fended off two years earlier, won their closely fought rematch.
Taylor would have little trouble holding the 11th for more than a decade, but his fortunes finally shifted in 2006 as Democrats looked to capitalize on President George W. Bush’s plunging approval ratings. That year, Democrats recruited Heath Shuler, who had achieved fame in the region as a high school quarterback before his ill-fated career in the NFL, to take on Taylor.
Shuler decisively flipped the seat, and he would spend his three terms in Congress as one of the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus. But while Shuler’s career survived the 2010 Republican wave, that election left the GOP with the power to ensure even he couldn’t win again.
Republicans quickly passed a new map that split the Democratic bastion of Asheville between the 10th and 11th Districts, a change that made it virtually impossible for any Democrat to prevail. Shuler opted not to seek reelection in 2012, and Republican Mark Meadows had no trouble winning the general election to replace him.
The 11th remained safe for the GOP as long as Asheville was divided. The League of Women Voters drew attention to the awkward lines in 2017 with a “Gerrymander 5K,” which saw runners jog along the bizarre border between the 10th and 11th.
Afterward, writer Jeremy Markovich described his experience running the course in a piece for Politico.
“As a race, the Gerrymander 5K was unsatisfying,” he wrote. “We had to run on the sidewalks; one poor woman nearly decapitated herself when she ran right into the guywire of a telephone pole.”
Asheville was reunified in time for the 2020 election after the state Supreme Court, which had a Democratic majority at the time, supervised the redrawing of the congressional lines.
Meadows, though, didn’t stick around to try his luck in what was still a Republican-leaning district. The congressman stunned just about everyone by announcing his retirement one day before the candidate filing deadline, and he later resigned early to become Trump’s chief of staff.
Meadows’ departure set off a new and volatile period in the 11th’s history. Out of the chaos, Madison Cawthorn, a 24-year-old real estate investor, emerged seemingly from nowhere to win the GOP nomination against a candidate backed by both Trump and Meadows.
Democrats believed that Cawthorn, whom three women had accused of unwanted sexual advances, could be defeated in a district that, while still challenging, no longer appeared unwinnable. The conservative Congressional Leadership Fund also worried that Cawthorn, who also described his visit to Adolf Hitler’s vacation home as an item on his “bucket list,” could lose the seat, and it spent $1 million to aid him.
The Republican, though, decisively prevailed 55-42 over Democrat Moe Davis in what would be the last hotly contested general election in the 11th for several years. But while Cawthorn, who became eligible to serve in the House when he turned 25 before Election Day, seemed set for a long career in North Carolina GOP politics, he would be gone in just two years.
Cawthorn’s sole term was defined by multiple scandals, embarrassing videos, unhinged rhetoric, and run-ins with the law. Edwards, then a member of the state Senate, pitched himself as a loyal conservative who, unlike the publicity-seeking congressman, wouldn’t be “Instagram famous.”
Edwards narrowly beat Cawthorn 34-32 ahead of what would be the first of two easy general elections. Cawthorn, for his part, bought a $1 million house in Florida shortly after his defeat, and he’s currently competing next week in a congressional primary in the Sunshine State’s 19th District that includes a multitude of other politicians from other states.
Any chance of Cawthorn and Edwards serving together in Congress, though, vanished last week when Edwards dropped out after his scandal also made him famous for all the wrong reasons.
Neither Democrat Alani Bankhead nor independent Seth Bodnar dropped their bids for Montana’s open U.S. Senate seat ahead of Monday’s deadline to remove their names from the ballot, ensuring a three-way race with Republican Kurt Alme in November.
Bodnar and his supporters had called on Bankhead to end her campaign in the belief that he would have a stronger chance of defeating Alme in the general election. Bankhead, however, vocally rejected any such demands and instead said Bodnar should quit.
Polling has shown Alme comfortably leading both of his opponents.
Ballot Measures
AK Ballot
Despite saying he would pull back from spending on political causes last year, Elon Musk donated $1.5 million last month to a group trying once again to repeal Alaska’s unique top-four primary system.
Voters narrowly approved that system in 2020 by just a 1 percentage point margin, then almost undid it in 2024, when it survived by just 0.2 percent of the vote. Opponents of the law, however, have qualified a second repeal proposal, known as Measure 2, that will appear on the ballot this fall.
Musk didn’t directly contribute to the campaign behind the repeal effort, though. Rather, he gave to a group called Aurora Action Network, which in turn donated $1 million to Repeal Now Alaska.
Even with Musk’s infusion, though, supporters of the top-four primary, under which general elections are conducted using ranked-choice voting, have outraised opponents. Recent fundraising disclosures show that No on 2 has brought in almost $5.8 million while Repeal Now Alaska has raised just over $1.5 million.
Legislatures
IN State Senate
More than three months after Indiana’s primary, election officials announced on Monday that challenger Paula Copenhaver had defeated state Sen. Spencer Deery by three votes after a previous tally showed Deery leading by that same margin. An attorney for the senator immediately said he would file a legal challenge.
Deery was one of seven Republican lawmakers targeted by Donald Trump for refusing to support a plan to eliminate the last two congressional districts in the state held by Democrats. Five were defeated while just one, Greg Goode, survived, though it had appeared that Deery had managed to hang on as well.
However, the Indiana Recount Commission rejected eight ballots, including six cast for Deery, over what the Indiana Capital Chronicle said were “technical” issues like clerks failing to sign ballots.
“This is unprecedented,” Deery’s attorney said after the announcement, according to the Chronicle. “Ballots don’t get tossed for a signature missing from a clerk.” She promised to appeal the decision to the state Court of Appeals.
