Who'll Replace Patrick McHenry?

Foxx's kind of Republican, 
Greg Mills

The Republican primary for Congressional District 10 features five candidates on the March 5 ballot, but only two seem viable, with two other wild card disrupters and a perfectly nice older gentleman. The two viable candidates would appear to be Green Beret Pat Harrigan, who chickened out of facing off against Tim Moore in CD14, and jumped to the 10th instead with the help and encouragement of retiring Congressman Patrick McHenry. And Grey Mills, whom Virginia Foxx just endorsed yesterday.

Mills is so business friendly and suburban establishment that he might start purring. He's a lawyer, educated at the Regent University School of Law (the late Rev. Pat Robertson founded it), and he's wearing his Christianity like a cufflink. According to his Linked In page, he's wholly employed as corporate officer/attorney for Randy Marion Automotive in Mooresville. He's been twice in the NC House from an Iredell district, currently NCH 95 where he's finishing out his second term. He served two terms before, first elected 2008 and reelected 2010.

Foxx didn't endorse Pat Harrigan, who previously ran for Congress in 2022, losing to Democrat Jeff Jackson in the 14th Congressional District, and who presents his much more muscular, frankly military patriotism with a disarming Captain America forthrightness. Harrigan had come on strong about cleaning Tim Moore's clock, then with the help of Patrick McHenry hisownself, filed to run for McHenry's open seat mere minutes after McHenry's announcement that he would not run for reelection.  Harrigan evidently decided something kinda uncourageous, that discretion is the better part of valor. Because of whatever filter, Foxx passed him over for a less muscle-bound conservative.

Harrigan and Mills have three other rivals, two of them on the fringes, like Diana Jimison, a Hickory nurse who tried to run once before in 2022 as an independent write-in and who has made something of a name for herself by agitating repeatedly at Catawba County School Board meetings for the removal of certain books from the school library. And Brooke McGowan, whose prepping-for-open-warfare campaign site has to be witnessed firsthand. He has a tab on the Homepage, #war, and I believe he means it. He especially has his eye out for apparently physical revenge on the people who faked the whole COVID "deal" and of course for the ones who "stole the election": "We cannot forget or grant amnesty to those who threatened us, our loved ones, and especially our children. They have not apologized. They are not contrite. They don’t even think they did anything wrong. Which means they will do it again when prompted."

The last of the five in the March 5 primary -- Charles Eller, a Grease Monkey franchisee and self-made residential solar expert, who seems strangely out of place in this crowd.