Target One for Ending the Republican Super-Majority in the NC Senate

 

Weeks ago the Democratic Minority Leader in the NC Senate, Sydney Batch, identified Lisa Stone Barnes in Senate Dist. 11 (Nash, Franklin, and Vance counties in north-central NC) as the prime target for ending the Republican super-majority in the NC Senate. Batch and other top Democrats, including Associate Justice Anita Earls, were on their way to a campaign roll-out in Rocky Mount to anoint and give their blessings to the Democratic candidate they think can take out Barnes -- mega-church founder James Gailliard, who previously served two terms in the NC House in an overlapping Nash Co. district following the Blue Wave of 2018. 

That was the first time I heard that Barnes was Dems' best shot at flipping a Senate seat and ending the Republican super-majority.

Then, in one of the most bizarre moments during the December candidate-filing period, Barnes's fellow Republican Senator Amy Galey of Alamance traveled north to Rockingham to beg Sheriff Sam Page not to file against Sen. Phil Berger, because (Galey wrote in a several-page letter that became public) if Phil Berger is distracted by a nasty primary, he won't be able to funnel money and other help to three vulnerable Senate Republicans, namely Lisa Stone Barnes (and two others I'll get to presently in subsequent posts). Amy Galey happens to be a Majority Whip in the Senate, a true lieutenant to Phil Berger's president pro tempore. So it's practically Republican establishment gospel -- Lisa Barnes is in trouble.

Which is surprising to this admittedly far-off observer. Barnes has looked like an immovable institution in Nash County. Her husband Johnny Barnes owned and operated the biggest multi-county sweet potato growing operation probably on the East Coast (and incidentally used migrant labor -- a bracero died of heat exhaustion on his farm in 2024). Always well turned out (Republican country club chic) and infallibly attracted to business interests and the connections that come with them, Lisa Barnes rose on civic volunteerism. Her political ambition also asserted itself. She won a seat on the Nash County Commission in 2012, followed in 2018 with beating incumbent Democrat Bobbie Richardson for an NC House seat, the only blue-to-red flip in 2018 in the whole state in what was otherwise a blue wave year. Lisa Stone Barnes was suddenly a genuine Republican princess in the General Assembly.

She spent only two terms in the NC House before she saw an opening to run for the NC Senate in 2020, where she's now in her third term. 

But into every life the rain must fall. First, in late 2024, a Superior Court judge placed Barnes Family Farms Corp. into receivership after it defaulted on $40 million in loans from Rabo AgriFinance, a unit of Netherlands-based Rabobank which specializes in agriculture financing. "The court-appointed receiver takes over the businesses, with wide-ranging duties that include paying utility bills and insurance premiums, obtaining bank and other documents, changing locks and negotiating the sale of assets. The Barnes can’t interfere with the receiver, who is authorized to seek help from the sheriff’s offices in Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties."

Then an unkinder cut just six months later. Johnny Barnes died in July 2025. He was only 61.

Despite the heaviness of losing financial and emotional props which might deter most of us, Lisa Stone Barnes showed up on the first day of candidate filing -- December 1st -- to make her run for reelection official and coincidentally become the Number One target for every Democrat in Raleigh and elsewhere in what may turn out to be Blue Wave 2026. She has always projected pro-business moderation while following her Republican crowd to vote for every anti-abortion measure that comes down the pike, but you won't find MAGA spikiness or trumpist braying on any of her social sites. Whether the fines for violating migrant-labor laws charged to Johnny Barnes seriously damage her pro-business image -- that's an open question.

James D. Gailliard (D)

James Gailliard is impressive by several metrics, and he's been running against Barnes since last July. He is the founding pastor of Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount, a genuine megachurch "serving thousands of families from ten North Carolina Counties and six Virginia counties. In 2013, Word Tabernacle was named amongst the 100 fastest growing churches in America." Gailliard is a native of Philadelphia, a graduate of the Central High School for Boys and Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he was an honors student. He worked in corporate America before feeling called to the ministry.

Gailliard's civic volunteerism and leadership are a match to Barnes's. 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.

He posted on Twitter a sort of apologia for his combination of religious/political activism: "If pastors avoid politics, we aren’t being neutral—we’re being negligent. The Bible speaks to laws, land, labor, and leadership. To ignore policy is to ignore people—and that’s the opposite of shepherding." And only naturally, he started a podcast, Until All Thrive, last July.

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.

In the NC House District 25, It's Preacher v. Preacher

NC House District 25

North Carolina House District 25 is one of those gerrymandered monstrosities meant to keep a Republican in office. It juts and twists around Franklin and Nash counties like a bad case of nerves and takes in a bit of Rocky Mount. It's been represented by Republican Jeffrey Collins since the Tea Party election of 2010, and no Democrat has ever made much of a showing against him. But Collins is vacating the seat, and any time you have an open seat -- especially in a year like 2018 -- anything can happen. It is said that Collins hand-picked his Republican successor (see below).

Democrat James D. Gailliard is the founding pastor of Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount, a genuine megachurch "serving thousands of families from ten North Carolina Counties and six Virginia counties. In 2013, Word Tabernacle was named amongst the 100 fastest growing churches in America."

Gailliard is a native of Philadelphia, a graduate of the Central High School for Boys and Morehouse College, where he was an honors student. He worked in corporate America before feeling called to the ministry. “The necessary work of the faith community, not-for-profits, human, economic and community development entities is often hindered and not helped by state and federal legislation,” Gaillaird said. “This is particularly the case in Nash County. I am running for public office because I believe in legislation that advances the interest of our entire community.”

James Gailliard

Gailliard said Nash County and the state needs pragmatic, common-sense legislation regarding education, economics, health care, housing, and social policy that can only be authored by a group of legislators capable of considering various opinions, ideologies, and perspectives. “I am interested in finding common ground for the common good so that each resident has an opportunity to advance and become civically engaged and contributors to our tax base.”

Gailliard ran for this seat in 2016 against Collins and got 31.90% of the vote.
Republican John Check is a semi-retired Methodist minister who serves as a senior advisor to the president of NC Weslesyan College (where, incidentally, Democrat Gailliard also sits on the Board of Visitors). Check said he would let God guide him in his legislative choices. Maybe God can also help him get some campaign apparatus up and running, since I could not find him anywhere -- no website, not on Facebook, Twitter ... forget about it! On the NC Wesleyan College site, he's mentioned in press releases for giving sermons on special occasions.