Democrat 6th District Congresswoman Kathy Manning easily won a second term in Congress in the Tuesday, Nov. 8 election.

Manning won reelection with 138,104 votes for 53.7 percent over Republican first-time candidate Christian Castelli who had 116,076 votes for 45 percent.

Libertarian candidate Thomas Watercott tallied 2,770 votes for 1 percent.

Manning won her first term in 2020 in a markedly different and more Democratic 6th District.

The current 6th District includes all of Guilford and Rockingham counties, most of Caswell County and a portion of Forsythe County.  The congressional redistricting map was drawn by special masters appointed by the North Carolina courts and is supposed to only be used for the 2022 election.

Manning won Guilford County with 109,319 votes for 59 percent over Castelli who had 74,166 votes for 40 percent.

However, Castelli won big in Rockingham County with 66.6 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Manning and Castelli also won in Caswell County and Forsyth County.

Unfortunately for Castelli that 66.6 percent only totaled 21,512 votes in Rockingham County and 60 percent in Caswell County was only 4,713 votes.  In Forsyth County Castelli won with 15,645 votes to 15,324 for Manning.

So while Castelli won three of the four counties in the 6th District, the votes were not anywhere close to enough to overcome Manning’s major win in Guilford County.

Along with the advantage of being an incumbent, Manning also raised more than four times as much money as Castelli.  According to Open Secrets, Manning raised $2.8 million and had $800,000 cash on hand on Oct. 19.  Castelli raised $661,000, so Manning had more cash on hand going into the final weeks of the election than Castelli was able to raise for his entire campaign.

Manning had no Democratic primary opponent while Castelli survived a seven candidate Republican primary that he won over second place finisher, 2020 Republican 6th District candidate Lee Haywood, by a little over 1,000 votes.