Womack rides blue wave to stunning victory over Moore

Two weeks before Election Day, Kalshi, a betting prediction company, gave LaKesha Womack less than a 10% chance of knocking off incumbent Tim Moore to win a seat in Congress.

Not even prediction markets foresaw the nationwide blue wave that would flip at least five U.S. House seats held by Republicans in North Carolina from the GOP to Democrats. A Democrat also holds a narrow lead in a sixth race, potentially reversing the delegation’s pre-election 10-4 split.

While Womack was a little-known Charlotte resident seeking her first elected office, Moore had spent a record 10 years as N.C. House speaker before deciding to run for Congress in 2024 in a district drawn to favor Republicans.

Moore won his first race with more than 58% of the vote, besting President Donald Trump, who won 57% of the vote in the district two years ago.

This year, on the first day of early voting, he told a WUNC reporter he was out knocking on doors “even though I probably wouldn’t have to if I didn’t want to.”

His campaign received more than $1.9 million in political contributions, while Womack brought in less than $56,000, a 34-to-1 difference.

The district is 67% white and includes all of Moore’s home county of Cleveland, plus Burke, Gaston, Polk, and Rutherford counties, and part of Mecklenburg County.

Womack is a Black woman. Moore won all five more rural counties, but lost by a 2-to-1 margin in Mecklenburg County.

Womack gathered with family and friends at the Piedmont Social Club in southwest Charlotte’s Steele Creek neighborhood on Tuesday to watch election returns. As a TV flashed the numbers, Womack began to think she might pull off an upset.

“When the early votes started coming in, we started seeing we were doing pretty well with Republican and Democratic voters, and we felt like if we could do well with the unaffiliated voters we would have a chance,” Womack said Wednesday.

“Failed economic policies, high gas prices, and the war in Iran” made voters “willing to take a chance on someone new,” she said, while those same voters saw Moore as a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump.”

Womack received 51.1% of the vote to defeat Moore by a 6,415-vote margin out of more than 288,000 votes cast. As of 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Moore had not called Womack to concede the race, she said, adding Moore probably did not have her phone number.

Moore said he was disappointed by the results, but congratulated Womack on her victory, in a response to Business North Carolina.

“I sincerely wish her success, because when our communities succeed, we all succeed,” Moore said.

“I remain as optimistic as ever about the future of our district, our state, and our country. I have always believed, and still do, that America’s best days are ahead of us,” he added.

Womack said she entered the race focused less on her well-known opponent and more on the people in the district. “People are just struggling and people are having so much uncertainty with the economy,” she said.

Her first task was to figure out how to run a campaign on a tight budget. Her largest contribution was $3,000 from the North Carolina Democratic Party. One individual gave $1,000, but no other donor contributed more than $500, according to campaign finance reports. She said she never met minimum financing targets to trigger help from the Democratic National Committee.

She campaigned by going to events like town halls and forums, often by herself.

“After I won the primary, I would go to events like candidate forums and town halls, and he never showed up,” says Womack. “He didn’t start coming until September or October, and I’d been showing up since March and people had gotten to know me.”

The race received little media attention until mid-October, when Womack, 49, was issued a criminal summons in Polk County over her failure to return a rental car. Womack says she was homeless at the time and living in the rental car and didn’t have access to the internet. The warrant was originally issued in 2020, but was not served until a few weeks before the election.

Womack said she has hired an attorney, has a court date next week, and expects the matter to be resolved. She blames Moore’s supporters for highlighting her past legal trouble. “We’re not friendly,” she says of Moore.

“I think most people are going to see it as a political attack. If I had stolen a car, I think I would have been arrested a long time ago,” she says.

A Vanderbilt University graduate, Womack has worked since February 2024 for Charlotte-based Aspire Community Capital, a small community development financial institution founded by veteran N.C. economic development executive Ronnie Bryant.

In Washington, Womack plans to focus on mitigating the effects of Medicaid cuts expected to begin in January, affordability, and education funding, particularly after-school childcare. She says those are the issues voters prioritized in giving Democrats control of the Senate and House on Tuesday.

“There’s a lot we can do to immediately make an impact on people’s lives,” she says.