Democrat LaKesha Womack unseated Rep. Tim Moore, the former speaker of the North Carolina House, on Tuesday in the 14th Congressional District. Mecklenburg County carried her past the lead Moore built everywhere else in the district.
Moore, a Republican from Kings Mountain, won the district's five other counties, Gaston, Cleveland, Burke, Rutherford and Polk, by about 29,000 votes combined. In Mecklenburg, Womack won by about 36,000: 73,515 to 37,712, or 66 percent.
Districtwide, she received 147,388 votes to Moore's 140,973, or 51.1 percent, according to the State Board of Elections' unofficial count. Because it is a federal office, the state board, not the counties, is to make the result official, at its canvass on Tuesday, Nov. 24.
Moore served a decade as speaker in Raleigh before winning the seat in Congress, according to his House biography, and sits on the House Financial Services and Budget committees. He is a lawyer who has practiced in Cleveland County for his whole career, the biography says.
Womack, in a campaign statement Oct. 29, described herself as a single mother living with Type 1 diabetes who had been hospitalized in intensive care after a medical emergency, and said rebuilding financially afterward "required determination, resilience, and faith."
In the same statement, she said she had "emphasized accountability and affordability" throughout the campaign, and that once elected she would hold regular town halls across the district.