The No. 1 Competitive, Pick-up Senate Seat

NC Senate Dist. 11 -- Nash, Franklin, and Vance counties

Sydney Batch of Wake County is the Minority Leader in the NC Senate, and she has named Lisa Stone Barnes as the top Republican target in 2024 for flipping a Senate seat, a potential upset that could end the supermajority dictatorship of the Senate Republicans under Phil Berger. Batch went to Rocky Mount on July 10th for the campaign roll-out of Barnes's Democrat opponent, Rev. James Gailliard (for historic context on both, use the Q bar above). Gailliard used his own home as launching pad and gathered a crowd which included NC Associate Justice Anita Earls and many of the operatives active right now in the NC Democratic Party and in the DemsSenateCaucus. Gailliard has clearly been anointed, and Batch told Will Doran of WRAL that the candidate will need around $3 million to mount a winning campaign. I bet he'll raise it.

Gailliard is impressive by several metrics. He's a well educated Northern transplant who worked in corporate management before being called to the ministry (as the saying goes). He was the founding pastor of Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount, and has 20 years behind him as senior pastor of what became a mega-church, building a strong self-help community base that stretched over several North Carolina counties and up into Virginia. Word Tabernacle is considered one of the largest historically Black churches in the state. In 2013, it was named among 100 fastest growing churches in the whole country. From that base, in 2018 Pastor Gailliard ran for and won a seat in the NC House, was reelected in 2020, and then lost the seat in the Biden mid-term of 2022.

Gailliard's good deeds as a community leader were recognized and honored. He was named the 2016 Distinguished Citizen by the Rocky Mount Chamber of Commerce, and most recently was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Joe Biden. Gailliard is the founder Chair of The REACH Center, Inc, a member of the Board of Trustees, Elizabeth City State University as well as the Board of Preachers, Morehouse College, his alma mater, and he is the former Chairman of the Board for the North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. He was also named to the Board of Visitors at NC Wesleyan College. "His academic background is a combo of theology, counseling, and business administration." (Source: Word Tabernacle)

His public speaking can be judged in this video of his keynote address to the NC Black Alliance, May 6, 2025:

LISA STONE BARNES, Republican incumbent

Barnes previously served a couple of terms as a Nash County commissioner and then moved up to the NC House (District 7) in the elections of 2018, defeating incumbent Democrat Bobbie Richardson in the rare blue-to-red flip that year of the Blue Wave. That upset made Barnes an instant rising star, so pretty instantly she announced she would run in a three-way Republican primary for an open Senate seat in 2020, and she won it easily. During that campaign, I called Barnes "something of a moderate" because she nowhere played the Trump card, putting his name all over her website like most lower-level Republican candidates did and still do, and she didn't parade the label "conservative." She seemed more interested in economic development for her rural district than in social hot-buttons (she had pushed the expansion of broadband in rural areas). 

Lisa Stone Barnes

Her business interests greatly define her legislative "moderation." "Barnes’ family runs a massive farming operation throughout multiple eastern North Carolina counties that’s one of the world’s largest sweet potato producers, in addition to growing other crops. It was taken over by a foreign bank last year after defaulting on $40 million in loans" (Doran).  In March 2024, the farm was fined $187,000 because of the heat-related death of a Mexican worker: "The Department of Labor said Barnes Farming violated three worker safety rules, including not providing breaks, not having adequate access to water and not having adequate emergency response procedures." (NCVoices). 

Though she was targeted by the state Democratic apparatus in 2024, she hung on for reelection. In 2026, she'll be dragging more baggage.

Dave's Redistricting calculates Senate District 11 as 50.0% D, 48.5% R, and 1.6% Other (which I know doesn't add up, but whattya gonna do?). For the 2024 race, the Civitas Partisan Index rated the district "Lean Republican," even with a D+1 rank (whattya gonna do?). The district no doubt does lean Republican, especially in a Republican year. Is 2026 going to be a Republican year? Not damn likely.