Dual Party Primaries in Knotty House District 32

 

Part of a series examining the North Carolina Educators on the Ballot (NCEOB) who are progressives running as Republicans to primary other Republicans in the NC House.

An Open Seat

House District 32 includes Granville County and over half of Vance, directly north of Raleigh. Dave's Redistricting lists it as 53.1% Democrat v. 42.5% Republican. The Civitas Partisan Index rates it as D + 2 "Lean Dem." 

Short story: There's a Dem primary underway. Winner will face the winner of the Republican primary, also underway, both to be decided on March 3rd. The Republican primary is complicated by a third progressive, running as an NCEOB-endorsed brand new Republican against a doctrinaire former Republican house member looking to make a comeback. In other words, it's kind of a clusterknot.

The Republican Primary

Pamela Ayscue

Former House member Frank Sossamon won the seat in 2022, lost it in 2024 by 228 votes to a Dem who didn't last a year in the job before he said he was done. So Sossamon is trying to get back to Raleigh and he's apparently a strong campaigner -- with the style of a preacher, which he is -- but also with volunteer service cred. He's a pentecostal with strong conservative views. I wrote extensively about him in July 2024. At that time I was skeptical that a Dem could beat him. I was wrong, by 228 votes.

Sossamon is being challenged by retired teacher Pamela Ayscue, who's on the same page with all six candidates recruited by NCEOB -- backing "the Leandro plan," a court-ordered plan never enforced for increasing public education spending to deliver to every NC student their constitutional right to a sound, basic education. This case has been dragged through decades of legal blocks and feints since the original lawsuit was filed in 1994. 

Pamela Ayscue taught in Vance County Schools, one of the original plaintiffs in the Leandro lawsuit. She also taught in Granville County before retiring and is now working for the state Department of Public Safety (NandO).

Ayscue has a very active Facebook feed which shows that she's politically engaged on several issues, but I found no other campaign infrastructure -- no website, no other social media.

She's up against a strong former House member who already has a formidable base. She can't beat him, but perhaps she can refocus some Republican moderates on the plight of public education in the state.

The Democratic Primary

Melissa Elliott

Melissa Elliott

Elliott is the mayor of Henderson, the county seat of Vance Co. a town of 15,000. No Democrat had filed for H 32 up to almost the end of the filing period. On Thursday, the day before the end of filing, Melissa Elliott showed up and put her name in for H 32. What she told the reporter for WIZS radio that day carried a negative vibe and peaked my attention:

“I’m going to run a clean race, in spite of all the dirty things they’ve said about me. I’m just going to be Melissa Elliott, and I feel like all of this [past controversy?] was training for me to have super, super thick skin so no matter what people say, I can still fight for people that don’t necessarily fight for me.”

"I’ve been thinking about running for two years. I got sidetracked or derailed with all of the public scrutiny and then I said to myself, you’ve never let anybody or anything stop you before.” 

The "dirty things" people were saying about her appear to have turned up in a commissioned survey of city employees about their job satisfaction. I have to conclude that the never specified "allegations made by various individuals" concerning Elliott's role as mayor of Henderson bordered on libel. The law firm that conducted the survey, in a formal letter to the town council, seemed to disavow its own report, sending a full refund of the money the town had already anted up for the work -- which might suggest an admission that the "allegations" against Elliott were, as she said, "unverified statements, opinions, and hearsay, primarily originated from individuals with different political or personal perspectives."

After Elliott won the Mayorship of Henderson, following what must have been a contentious runoff, she was recognized as an outstanding Black woman in politics by her alma mater, St. Augustine University in Raleigh. Receiving the award, she said, "Today, I stand on the shoulders of my African and Jewish ancestors as the first Black Woman to be sworn in as the Mayor of Henderson." Henderson is over 60% Black.

Some of the dirt on Elliott is hidden from me behind local press pay walls. There's something about a shady real estate deal and accusations from fellow council members. All-in-all, not a good look for a political candidate at any level, even in a "Lean Democrat" environment. Maybe especially in that environment.

Curtis McRae

Curtis McRae

McRae is a former Marine and a member of the Oxford, NC, city council. From his website: "He served 25 years in federal law enforcement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, retiring after a distinguished career that included leadership roles as Associate Warden and Warden at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina." Curiously, the same website is silent on his service in Oxford town government.

McRae was first a working member and then an endorsed candidate for DownHomeNC.org, a multi-racial, working-class advocacy group that does "deep canvassing" and surveys rural people. He should have a very good handle on door-knocking and political organizing from that work.

In announcing he wouldn't be running for reelection to H 32, Bryan Cohn, the Dem who beat Frank Sossamon, endorsed McRae, who was also his colleague on the Oxford city council.

"Most Vulnerable Republican" in NC House May Not Be

 

Rep. Frank Sossamon

Anderson Alerts gave us a handy guide to "the most vulnerable" Republican House members in Raleigh. All things staying equal, knocking off just one of these sitting ducks would break the Republican veto-proof super-majority. ("All things staying equal," of course, if a forlorn hope, since there are several Democrats made very vulnerable themselves by the most recent round of gerrymandering. I'll talk about them later.)

Anderson fingers Frank Sossamon, who has served as rep in House District 32 only since January of 2023,  as the most vulnerable Republican this November. Sossamon is something of a big-wig in the International  Pentecostal Holiness Church, founded in 1911 out of "the holiness movement" with quickly bonded with "the pentecostal movement" of the 1920s. Sossamon is senior retired pastor of a church in Henderson, County seat of Vance Co. (Sossamon's district includes Vance and Granville up on the Virginia border north of Wake.) Since he retired from being an active pastor, he's working full time in the family's funeral home business (they own three). From the video I've seen of him, Sossamon is an affable guy, a straight shooter who knows how to handle diversity, nothing like a typical Southern bible-thumper, and it's telling that the church he pastored for over 30 years is a thoroughly multi-racial congregation (Vance County is almost 40% Black). 

In an historically Democratic district, Sossamon "eked out a win" in his maiden campaign in 2022 (he campaigned heavily in churches) against a Democratic opponent with a personal scandal in his past that exploded at the height of the campaign. District 32 had been a Biden +10 county in 2020, but with gerrymandering is rated for 2024 by the John Locke Foundation's partisan ratings as only D+4. Dave's Redistricting parses the district as 53.2% Democratic.

Other than his assumed apocalyptic End Times/Judgment Day druthers, Sossamon appears to be about as upstanding a community do-gooder as you could find (with a heavy dollop of law 'n' order). From his website: "...member of the Ethics Council at Maria Parham Hospital, former President and Board Member of the Henderson/Vance County Crime Stoppers for 30 years, a member of the Vance County Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, current President and Board Member of the Granville County Crime Stoppers for 10 years, and a member of the North Carolina Crime Stoppers Association Board of Directors...."

But Sossamon's religio rectitude caused him to buy into David Lane's particular brand of Christian nationalism (advanced by the American Renewal Project), so you might have expected him to introduce a bill to force hanging "In God We Trust" in big letters above the Speaker's perch in the House. (The Great Seal of the state -- you know, "Esse Quam Videri" -- presently hangs there.) Sossamon's measure passed the House but got hung up in the Senate. He's very willing to intercede for the local school systems, introducing one bill  -- which passed -- reducing the length of terms on the elected Granville County School Board and another giving flexibility to both Vance and Granville school boards to start their school terms as early as August 1st (bill had moved in the House before the session ran out of time). Interestingly, he introduced a bill to add Tianeptide, an antidepressant already not approved for use in the U.S., to the "controlled substances" list in NC. Is there an underground market in NC for Tianeptide? That bill made it to a second reading but was left dangling at the end of the session. His legislative initiatives aside, he's a loyal Republican soldier voting with his caucus, and you can rest assured that he is dead set against homosexuality and abortions.

In my view, he won't be easy to beat, possibly because he has gone about the job under his philosophy and lifestyle of pastoring, which means comforting the sick, visiting the poor, helping the wounded to find salve for their wounds -- genuine good deeds which he can brag about, and does. That plus the NC House Republican caucus is shoving over $400,000 into a media blitz to help Sossamon keep his seat (Anderson Alerts).

Bryan Cohn, Democrat

Cohn won a seat on the eight-member Oxford City Council (county seat of Granville) in 2021. He says he was motivated to run by the events of January 6th. His campaign website says that he's "a senior solution engineer working in food safety" (whatever the hell that portends). In another place, he sez he's "a dedicated professional in the agricultural industry," equally opaque. But clearly he's ambitious, running for a House seat almost immediately after winning his city council job, to challenge no less a first-term Republican who seems well positioned to win reelection, even in a D+4 district. All that "pastoring" that Sossamon brags about is good politics.

Cohn, as both a young man and a newcomer to the area, doesn't appear to have the community base that Sossamon has earned. So color me deeply skeptical that this seat can be flipped. (Unless something surprising and as yet unknown should reenergize Democrats.)