Did votes for HB2, budget play a role in veteran NC Democrat’s defeat?
A long-serving moderate Democrat in the N.C. House lost his primary Tuesday after facing a challenge from the left in a dramatically reshaped district.
Rep. Elmer Floyd, D-Cumberland, was unseated by Kimberly Hardy, a first-time candidate and professor of social work at Fayetteville State University. She won 54% of the vote and will now face Republican Diane Wheatley, a former Cumberland County commissioner and school board member, in what’s expected to be a competitive race.
While Floyd has faced criticism for voting for House Bill 2 — although he later supported the partial repeal compromise — Hardy made LGBT rights a key component of her campaign, garnering an endorsement from the advocacy group Equality NC.
And while Floyd was one of three House Democrats who voted for the budget bill last June, Hardy has stressed her support for Medicaid expansion, the key sticking point in budget negotiations. Floyd has said he initially supported the budget because of the millions of dollars for Cumberland County projects. But Hardy said if there’s a trade-off, Medicaid expansion is a more important goal.
“We focused on a very positive, progressive agenda,” Hardy told the NC Insider after her win. “We weren’t ever really running an anti-Floyd campaign.”
Floyd, a retired local government worker who has served in the House since 2009, did not return a call seeking comment on the election results. He focused his re-election campaign on his efforts to bring more jobs to Fayetteville and help more people expunge old criminal records.
Both candidates raised and spent a relatively modest amount of money in the primary. Campaign finance records show Floyd raised $36,200, most from it from PACs and other political committees. He only spent $10,600 through mid-February.
Hardy raised $18,200, with more than $10,000 coming from Dean Debnam and his wife Sesha of Raleigh. They own Public Policy Polling and other companies and often get involved in Democratic Party primary contests, typically favoring candidates with a more liberal or progressive agenda than their opponents. Hardy says she’s never met the Debnams.
Without much of an advertising budget, Hardy said she ran a grassroots campaign of attending community events, meeting voters and promoting her message on social media.
“You can’t know anybody until you’ve gone out into the community,” she said.
Many of the voters Hardy met were unaware that legislative districts had been redrawn and they’ll no longer be represented by Rep. Billy Richardson, D-Cumberland.
In a move that Floyd and Richardson both opposed, Floyd’s district was reshaped from a mostly urban district centered around northern Fayetteville to a much larger, more urban district that extends from downtown Fayetteville through eastern Cumberland, including small towns like Linden and Falcon. Floyd ultimately won in some of the precincts that were in his old district.
Floyd was one of only two incumbent legislators who lost their seats in Tuesday’s primary.
The other was less surprising: Sen. Eddie Gallimore, R-Davidson, fell short to a fellow legislator who challenged him, Rep. Steve Jarvis, R-Davidson.
All other incumbents who faced primary challengers survived, including other moderate Democrats like Rep. Michael Wray, D-Northampton, Richardson and Rep. Howard Hunter, D-Hertford.
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