On the North Carolina Coast. Another Democratic Insurgent v. An Angry Trumpist

Insurgent Tess Judge, running in the NC House District 6

The 6th District has been redrawn for 2018 to encompass Dare, Currituck, Hyde, and Pamlico counties on the North Carolina coast.

Incumbent Republican Beverly Boswell is serving her first term in the chamber. She was

Beverly Boswell

elected in 2016 with 51.83% of the vote against Democrat Warren Judge, the husband of the Democrat, Tess Judge, who is running for the seat this year (and thereby hangs a tale: see below). In 2016, incumbent Boswell also barely won her three-way Republican primary with just 39% of the vote. She's a Trumpist, through and through, and she even accuses her Republican primary opponent this year, a Currituck County commissioner, of being an anti-Trump liberal. “But these anti-Trump liberals have a surprise coming,” Boswell said, “because the American people support our President, and reject those who want to water down our conservative message and sell out to the Democrats as they have done for so many years,” she said. Boswell is particularly pissed at environmentalists who want to protect the coastline from stuff like off-shore drilling, and she throws around the label "radical left" at anyone who doesn't agree with her and bow down to Dear Leader Trump. She's a peach, this one!

Democrat Tess Judge helped her husband Warren run against Boswell in 2016 and was

Tess Judge

shaken by tragedy when Warren died in the last week of that campaign, practically on the eve of the election. Democratic leaders wanted Tess to replace her husband on the ballot, but it was too late for making that change, and even deceased, Warren Judge got 48.17% of the vote. If he had won, the Democratic leadership in the 6th District would have appointed Tess to his seat in the event of his death, so she's back this year as the logical (and the emotional) best opponent for Boswell. Tess Judge has worked in hospitality management her entire career and is well known in the coastal community for serving on the Board of Directors of the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce. She and her late husband Warren were named Co-Citizens of the Year by the Chamber in 2011. “As someone who has operated small businesses in our community for years, through good times and bad, I know how to manage a budget while also creating jobs .... Our people are our greatest resource – it’s time to listen and invest in them. We need to make public education a priority again. For years we have been asking our great teachers to do more with less and our schools and community colleges are underfunded. I’m running to ensure that our investments in public education result in more opportunities for our students and a workforce trained for the jobs of the future,” she said. She also currently serves on the Board of the Outer Banks Hospital and is Chair of the Outer Banks Hospital Development Council. One of her greatest contrasts to the incumbent is her concern over environmental protections for a fragile coast. I don't think she'd applaud off-shore drilling.