Republican U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx now has a Democratic opponent -- Roy Carter.
Carter, a tree farmer and retired teacher who lives in Glendale Springs, became the clear winner yesterday of the Democratic primary in the 5th Congressional District, after a close race with opponent Diane Hamby.
The May 6 primary was so tight -- Carter was leading by less than 1 percentage point -- that Hamby, a Statesville businesswoman, waited for provisional ballots to be counted before she would concede defeat.
Yesterday afternoon, after election officials in all 12 counties of the 5th District announced final results, Hamby had cut into Carter's preliminary lead of 531 votes, but not by enough. Carter still led by 475 votes after the provisional ballots were counted, according to the State Board of Elections.
The margin of victory was still less than 1 percent. Under state law, the losing candidate may request a recount when the margin falls within that range, and Hamby had said during the week that she would probably request one.
Yesterday, however, she declined to do so.
"I'm well within that margin," Hamby said. "But, statistically, it would have to be less than 100 votes to justify it. I'm not a math person, but I have to trust my math-geek friends."
Now that the primary winner is clear, the contest between Carter and Foxx is already heating up.
For his part, Carter said he was looking forward to "exposing" Foxx's record.
"I don't think it's truly representative of what people in the 5th truly believe in," he said. "We must do what's right for the people and leave our partisanship aside. I'm going to represent the people and not represent just one section."
Foxx won the 5th District seat in 2004 and is running for a third term.
In a press release, she congratulated Carter and called on voters in Northwest North Carolina to support her re-election bid.
"Together we can solve the problems facing our country and ensure that America remains the greatest country in the world" Foxx said. "I hope this campaign focuses on pressing issues like rising gas prices that voters are facing."
Her campaign manager, Todd Poole, said she would not use automated phone calls during the re-election bid and challenged Carter to do the same. Foxx has signed a "Do Not Robo Call" pledge drafted by the National Political Do Not Contact Registry.
Ryan Eller, Carter's campaign manager, said that the campaign will not send any "robocalls" to the people on the Do Not Call Registry, which is in line with the pledge.
But he would not rule out using such calls to contact those who are not on the list.
"We definitely support a do-not-call list for robocalls, but we have yet to decide how our campaign resources will be used," Eller said.
Then he said that Carter's campaign would agree not to use "robocalls" at all if Foxx agreed to send back and no longer accept money from political-action committees connected with large oil, pharmaceutical and health-insurance companies.
"We call upon our opponent to pledge not to take more money from the big oil companies while gas prices continue to go up, big pharmaceutical companies while drug prices go up, and big health-insurance companies while health-care costs go up," he said.
Foxx's campaign committee, Virginia Foxx for Congress, has raised $641,713 this election cycle, according to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, giving her $926,440 in cash on hand. About 31 percent, or $199,083, raised during this election cycle has come from political-action committees.
A small portion comes from committees affiliated with oil, pharmaceutical and health-insurance committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group based in Washington that tracks political contributions. For example, money from oil political-action committees this election cycle totaled $4,000.
The largest contributors are affiliated with the agriculture sector, according to the center.
Carter's campaign committee, Roy Carter for Congress, has raised $66,809 this election cycle, most of which he spent while running against Hamby. He had $3,534 cash on hand, according to the FEC filings. As for money he raised from political-action committees, they contributed about 5.4 percent, or $3,595.
■ Bertrand M. Gutiérrez can be reached at 727-7283 or at
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