In Triangle-area congressional runoff, Republicans Daughtry and Knott fight over Democratic ties
Sandra Dement just wants candidates to explain how they’ll fix the nation’s biggest problems. Her top issue? The economy.
“Gas is up. Groceries are up. Any kind of goods, any kinds of services, everything has gone up,” Dement, a 60-year-old Louisburg resident, said as she ate lunch at the Hometown Cafe in Franklinton. “And for me, I’m on disability. I’m on a limited budget … so I’ve got to make it work once a month.”
North Carolina voters view the economy and health care as the top issues heading into the 2024 general election season, according to a WRAL News poll released last month.
And yet when Dement and her neighbors turn on their televisions in the conservative 13th Congressional District, they see nonstop ads with candidates talking about other things. They also see a lot of mud-slinging and finger-pointing.
“I don’t like that,” Dement said. “I wish they would focus on the issues instead of trying to beat the other person down.”
Dement is among the dozens of customers who regularly pass through the Hometown Cafe on any given day. It’s a popular spot for workers who want to start their day with a biscuit or pop in for a hot lunch, or for retirees who want to sip coffee and talk about the state of things.
It’s smack in the middle of the 13th district, where Republicans Kelly Daughtry and Brad Knott are battling for GOP votes ahead of a May 14 primary runoff.
On a drizzly weekday morning, it’s hard to find anyone besides Dement who plans to vote or who has even heard of the candidates. Many have tuned out the race. And few seem concerned with the main issues the candidates are sparring over: immigration and conservative bona fides.
Dement is an unaffiliated voter who supported Democrat Barack Obama before pivoting to Republican Donald Trump. She voted in the GOP’s primaries on March 5, when none of the party's 13th district candidates received enough votes to win. She voted that day — “I think it was for Kelly Daughtry,” she said — but hasn’t decided who she’ll support in the runoff.
She says she wants to hear about solutions to the issues that matter most to her, not accusations.
Alas, Daughtry and Knott aren’t filling the airwaves with detailed proposals for bringing down prices or improving health care. Both candidates want to prioritize border security and reduce government spending, according to their campaign websites and responses for WRAL’s Voter Guide.
Instead, the race to represent more than 700,000 Triangle-area residents in Congress has become about which candidate is the most conservative, with Knott and Daughtry accusing each other of holding secret liberal beliefs.
By focusing on the issue most important specifically to Republicans — immigration was tops among likely Trump voters, according to the WRAL News poll — while pumping up their conservative credentials, each is targeting the party’s base to win the nomination. It’s an age-old strategy in primaries, which have notoriously low turnouts and tend to see participation from only the most engaged voters.
Voters in the district who are upset with the current discourse — or perhaps disengaged by it — can blame gerrymandering, incumbent U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel has said. State lawmakers redrew North Carolina’s election maps last year, giving Republicans an advantage in Nickel’s district and others.
In 2022, the 13th district was mostly confined to the southeastern regions of the Triangle in Wake, Johnston and Harnett Counties. In the 2024 election, it curls around left-leaning Wake County like a fish hook. It starts in Caswell County and stretches eastward across the state’s northern border before dropping into Franklin, Johnston and Harnett counties. It then turns west again, capturing the south extremes of Wake County before ending southwest of the Triangle in Lee County.
Frank Pierce is the Democratic nominee. Nickel isn’t seeking reelection because he sees little chance for any Democrat to win. He has lamented that whoever wins the GOP primary will be beholden to Trump, and the two Republican candidates are aligning themselves with the former president.
Knott was endorsed by Trump on April 5. His website touts a banner proclaiming “BRAD BACKS TRUMP!” “Strengthening law enforcement, securing the border and punishing people who are here illegally, especially if they commit crimes,” Knott said of his priorities in a WRAL interview last month. “We can build support on a bipartisan basis.”
Daughtry, meanwhile, has aired a television ad that says she and Trump are two sides of the same coin. “I'll vote to secure the border, send illegals back, crush cartels and protect families in every corner of the country,” she pledged in a recent social media post.
“Voters are seeking a candidate who will prioritize America first,” she said in a statement last month. “I will work with [Donald] Trump when I get to Congress to secure the border, reduce inflation and refocus our foreign policy.”
Daughtry and Knott share several similarities, beyond their platforms. Both are successful attorneys—Daughtry in private practice and Knott as a former federal prosecutor—and both have family members who are involved in North Carolina politics.
The candidates and their politically connected families have spent millions of dollars on their respective campaigns, helping Daughtry and Knott emerge from a crowded Republican field in the March 5 primary. They received the most votes, but no candidate received the 30% support needed to secure their party’s nomination.
How they got here
Daughtry, 54, is a family law attorney whose father, Leo Daughtry, represented Johnston County in the legislature for nearly 30 years. She earned some name recognition by running for the seat in 2022. She came up short in the GOP primary to Bo Hines, who benefited from support from Washington-based political groups and then lost to Nickel in the general election.
Daughtry’s personal wealth makes her a contender, Republican insiders say. She spent about $3 million on her 2022 campaign and loaned her campaign about $2.5 million before this year’s March primary. The Conservative Voters Alliance, a large political action committee funded by her father, spent about $1 million to help Daughtry, a spokesman for the super PAC told WRAL.
She is expected to spend more on the runoff, campaigning on her roots in the district and targeting rural voters. Her campaign ads show her driving down country roads in a pickup truck and then standing in front of a courthouse, citing work for farmers in the courtroom. Daughtry was part of a legal team that years ago sued an insecticide maker, Bayer Crop Science, for selling a product that killed crops in North Carolina.
While Daughtry is casting herself as the voice of rural voters, Knott is campaigning as the best candidate to tackle the issues of the day, namely immigration and crime.
Knott, 37, says his experience as an assistant U.S. attorney makes him best equipped to address those issues at the federal level. Launching his campaign with a video ad, Knott highlighted his work on a case from 2022 in which he helped secure a conviction and 50-year prison sentence for a Sampson County man accused of running an armed drug trafficking operation, selling “drugs that he received directly from the Mexican cartel,” Knott says in the ad. “It’s past time that we prosecute criminals and secure our borders.”
Knott’s family has also been instrumental in his run for Congress. Knott’s family members donated more than $700,000 to the American Foundations Committee, a super PAC that’s supporting his campaign. Knott’s father is Joe Knott, a high-powered Raleigh attorney and former member of the UNC Board of Governors. Knott’s brother, Tucker Knott, works as chief of staff for U.S. Senator Ted Budd.
Trump endorsed Budd’s run for U.S. Senate in 2022. Budd endorsed Knott and helped him get a meeting with Trump in Florida, helping Knott secure the former president’s endorsement. Republican political insiders say Knott likely needed the endorsement to compete with Daughtry, who has more money and, until recently, had significantly more ads than Knott on air.
Daughtry’s campaign believes the ads are working. Its social media account announced last week that its internal polling showed Daughtry with a 19 percentage point lead over Knott. That polling, however, was conducted before Trump endorsed Knott.
Research shows that Trump’s endorsement can have a significant influence in races where the candidates aren’t well-known, said David McLennan, director of the Meredith Poll.
With lesser-known candidates, “the impact of the Trump endorsement can be 20 points or more,” McLennan said in an email. “So, assuming that Daughtry’s poll numbers are accurate, it is possible that the Trump endorsement could swing the election to Knott.”
Attacked for ties to Democrats
Daughtry and Knott have donned barn coats for television ads where they campaign as political outsiders — a message tailored to connect with voters in the district’s more rural counties, particularly those further from Triangle’s core that weren’t in the district two years ago.
A campaign ad for Daughtry says she “grew up in rural North Carolina, where she learned conservative principles and the value of hard work.” Knott, in one of his ads, says: “I’m not a politician and I’m definitely not a Washington insider.”
Daughtry and Knott also make it clear they’re only courting the type of conservative who would be repulsed by their opponent’s ties to Democrats.
Knott has criticized Daughtry for donating to Democratic candidates in recent years. She gave $250 to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley in 2021 and $500 to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein’s reelection campaign in 2020. Stein is now running for governor against Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Daughtry says those donations are meaningless, noting that Trump also donated to Democrats before running for office. Her campaign points out that she has also given thousands of dollars to the North Carolina Republican Party and its candidates, including Robinson.
“It is not shocking [that] failed campaigns are pushing tired old talking points because they are losing,” said Aimee Mulligan, spokesperson for the Daughtry campaign.
Knott is also attacking Daughtry for a September 2012 Facebook post in which she said she planned to vote for Obama. Daughtry’s campaign said she voted for Mitt Romney that year and for Trump every year since.
By contrast, Daughtry points out that Knott didn’t participate in the Republican Party’s 2016 or 2020 presidential primaries — meaning he didn’t take time to vote for Trump. Daughtry has also questioned Knott’s commitment to election integrity — a touchstone for many right-wing voters — because Knott voted from the wrong address for multiple years.
Knott has said that missing the GOP primaries and voting from the wrong address were oversights. He says he forgot to change his address because his home is only about three miles away from his parents’ house, where he lived as an adult.
Daughtry’s campaign is also attacking Knott for working as a federal prosecutor under the Obama and Biden administrations, referring to Knott in ads as “Biden’s lawyer.” Knott’s campaign says those attacks are misleading because they suggest that his job was political in nature. While U.S. attorneys are typically nominated by presidents and approved by the senate, assistant U.S. attorneys are not.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina hired Knott in 2016. Thomas G. Walker, an Obama appointee who had led the office since 2011, had already resigned. Knott started in 2016, when John Bruce was the Acting U.S. Attorney. Knott stayed in his role until last November so that he could finish cases, punctuating his career prosecuting “illegal aliens, cartel members, opioid dealers and other hardened criminals,” said Jonathan Felts, a Knott campaign advisor.
Low turnout expected
Republicans and some unaffiliated voters are allowed to vote in the GOP’s May 14 runoff. Unaffiliated voters can participate only if they didn’t vote in another party’s primary on March 5.
The North Carolina State Elections Board did the math, finding that 366,000 of the district’s 533,500 registered voters — or about 68% percent of them — can still vote in the runoff. They can vote in person on the day of the runoff election, vote absentee by mail or cast a ballot in-person at an early voting site after April 25.
Voter turnout tends to drop for runoff races, as it did in North Carolina’s most recent congressional runoff in 2020. In the state’s 11th Congressional District race that year, turnout dipped from 31% in the March primary to 12% in the GOP runoff.
Political newcomer Madison Cawthorn defeated Lynda Bennett, who had been endorsed by Trump and former U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows. Cawthorn’s win was a giant upset, considering he was 24-years-old and Trump had tweeted out his support for Bennett.
After Cawthorn won the runoff, Trump called to congratulate him. During the call, Trump told Cawthorn that he didn’t know Bennett and only endorsed her on a recommendation from Meadows’ wife, Axios reported at the time.
At the Hometown Cafe in Franklinton, the idea of returning to the ballot box for a special election wasn’t appealing to many customers.The voting process takes time and energy that many people just aren’t willing to give up for candidates they’re not enthusiastic about.
Dement plans to vote on May 14. She says she sees voting as her civic duty — especially as a woman.
“It’s always worth it,” she said. “It took a lot of struggle and a lot of sacrifice for us to get to vote.”
She said that Trump’s endorsement of Knott is persuasive. But she’s still undecided.
