It’s finally official: The 2020 North Carolina congressional elections will be held with the districts re-re-drawn by the North Carolina legislature last month.
The districts were approved for the 2020 elections by the three judge panel on Monday, Dec. 2, after filing for every other office in the Nov. 3, 2020 election had already opened.
The filing for the 13 congressional seats was delayed, and until the North Carolina Board of Elections makes a decision, nobody is quite sure when the filing for those seats will open or close.
The good news is that the primary for those congressional seats will be held on March 3, 2020 with all the other primaries. If the judges had decided to re-draw the districts again, then there was the strong likelihood that a separate primary would have been held just for those running for Congress, which would have resulted in dismal voter turnout.
The new congressional districts take the 6th District, represented by Republican Congressman Mark Walker, and made drastic changes. The 6th District, which has been represented by a Republican since 1984, looks like a district that Walker or any Republican will have a difficult time winning.
The new 6th District includes all of Guilford County and stretches west to include most of Winston-Salem in Forsyth County.
Democrat Kathy Manning, who lost in an expensive race to Republican 13th District Congressman Ted Budd in 2018 announced Monday morning that she intended to run in the new 6th District. What made the announcement interesting is that Manning made that announcement before the court declared it would accept the new districts for the 2020 election.
In North Carolina, urban areas generally vote Democratic and rural areas vote Republican. The new 6th District includes Greensboro and Winston-Salem – two of the largest urban areas in the state.
In 2018, Guilford County was split between the 6th District and the 13th District.
Walker lost his portion of Guilford County with 45.42 percent of the vote and Budd lost his portion of the county with 35.52 percent.
Both Walker and Budd made up for their losses in Guilford County and won their elections with large totals in more rural counties, but the new 6th District doesn’t have any rural counties.
Walker has not made an official announcement on his intentions in the 2020 election.
Looking at the maps it appears the real election for the new 6th District is going to be in the Democratic primary, not the general election.
