‘Divine intervention’: Winning lottery will shake up the race, NC candidate says
Josh McConkey was at the gas station last week, waiting for his son to finish gymnastics practice, when his eye caught the signs for the North Carolina lottery.
The jackpot had been increasing, so McConkey, one of 14 Republicans running for Congress from the 13th district in next month’s primary, decided to buy a few tickets. On Friday morning, he found out he was one of two Cash 5 players in the state who had matched all five numbers, and was going to take half of the $1.5 million jackpot.
“I couldn’t have been more surprised,” McConkey told The News & Observer, saying in an interview that he can’t help but think that “there has to be some divine intervention here.”
Running a successful congressional campaign requires a lot of money, especially when it’s an open seat, and there’s a crowded field that makes it harder to distinguish yourself and make a lasting impression on voters.
Looking ahead to the March 5 primary, McConkey said he’s prepared to spend “whatever we need” from his winnings on the race, and that his campaign is evaluating how best to invest the money, so it has the most impact.
McConkey, an emergency physician and Air Force reservist from Apex who previously worked at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Durham, has released two TV ads so far, the most recent of which began airing last week.
He’s one of multiple candidates in the 13th district who have spent their own money on the race, having previously loaned himself $250,000. Since entering the race last March, McConkey has raised more than $210,000 from individual contributions. He entered this year with just over $330,000 on hand, according to the latest federal campaign finance records.
Other candidates in the race are DeVan Barbour, Kelly Daughtry, Fred Von Canon, Brad Knott, Marcus Dellinger, David Dixon, Steve A. (Von) Loor, James Phillips, Siddhanth Sharma, Matt Shoemaker, Eric Stevenson, Kenny Xu, and Chris Baker.
Two of those candidates, Barbour and Daughtry, unsuccessfully ran from the 13th district in 2022, when it had different district lines. They finished second and third, respectively, losing to Bo Hines, who lost the general election to Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel, and is running for Congress from the 6th district this year.
McConkey said he believes his lottery winnings are “a gift that’s dropped in our lap here for a reason,” and that he fully intends to use the money to help continue getting his campaign’s message out.
“I’ve been at this for almost a year, I was in before the new (district) lines came out, I’ve been committed to this race for an entire year,” he said. “These additional resources are definitely going to help, but I think the campaign has gone very well for us thus far.
“I think the only thing we might have been lagging in (is) with some of those resources, and that ability ... to get some of that message out, which now, with this amazing windfall, is not going to be an issue for us at all.”
