Impressive Dem Candidate in an Impossible R+9 House District

 

Mark Pless, disgruntled

The prospects for flipping the NC House Dist. 118 look pretty unlikely on paper, though one well qualified and impressive Democrat, former District Court Judge Danny Davis, is making the run anyway against Republican incumbent Mark Pless, who's already won reelection to this Madison/Haywood district twice. I wrote about Pless's being in hot water with his own party back in June:

NC House Rep. Mark Pless (Dist. 118, Haywood and Madison) has earned a reputation for putting his thumb in the eye of local government. He gets yelled at (but he could give a shit). Because he's safe (he assumes) in his heavily Republican district. He's never had a primary, and he never gets less than 60% of the vote against weak Democratic challengers. No primary until now.

Like Senator Ralph Hise, Pless likes to mess with "local bills" which can't be vetoed and which always represent some get-even move against local officials who have offended him or one of his buddies.

For example, last February, Pless filed a bill that would have stripped the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority of its ability to collect the county’s 4% room occupancy tax, effectively dismantling the organization. What actually passed upped the room tax to 6% and cut municipal officials out of membership on the board -- sticking it to Waynesville, Maggie Valley, and Lake Junaluska.

In April 2025 Pless introduced two bills that would eliminate county control of ambulance services statewide and change certification standards. Paramedics, medical technicians, and emergency service directors -- not to mention county commissioners -- got loud in their opposition. And Rep. Pless was photographed not taking the criticism gracefully.

Pless has particularly been at war with Waynesville town government. He tried back in 2022 to get a bill through that would make all town elections in Haywood County partisan, but that failed in the Senate. He later backed a trio of candidates to beat the incumbents and take control, but every last one of Pless's guys lost.

House Dist. 118 comes up on Civitas's "Partisan Index" for 2026 as R+9, "likely Republican," and Dave's Redistricting cites the partisan divide as 60% Republican, 37.8% Democratic, and only 2% "other." That's pretty dismal.

Judge Danny Davis

But Judge Davis seems undeterred, and he's got an impressive resume and an economics message. According to his press release, he's a gol-durned native of the district, graduated from Tuscola High School in Haywood and then Western Carolina University before earning a law degree from Campbell. Like many young lawyers, he served as an assistant district attorney before spending 27 years as a district court judge. According to his press release published in the Smoky Mountain News, "Since retiring from the bench — aside from brief stints as an emergency judge — he’s spent time serving as a court mediator and chairman of the Haywood County Board of Elections."

His campaign theme:

“[The] standard of living has been eroded over the last couple of decades because pro-wealth policies have led to stagnated wages while the cost of housing, healthcare, rent, child care and education have skyrocketed,” Davis said in the release. “Small businesses, which are the backbone of this country, are also struggling to pay their employees and provide good benefits for them. This has resulted in working men, women, couples and couples with children especially those under 50 having difficulty staying afloat to the point that they are angry and frustrated and don’t believe the system works for them.”

It may be an added liability (in what is already a long-shot campaign) that Davis has run for office twice before and lost, though he came "within a fraction of one percent" of winning the House district seat in 2012. Open question: Why did he wait 14 years to try again, after the voters almost gave it to him?

How This Mtn Republican Drew a Primary Challenger

 

A disgruntled Mark Pless.

NC House Rep. Mark Pless (Dist. 118, Haywood and Madison) has earned a reputation for putting his thumb in the eye of local government. He gets yelled at (but he could give a shit). Because he's safe (he assumes) in his heavily Republican district. He's never had a primary, and he never gets less than 60% of the vote against weak Democratic challengers. No primary until now.

Like Senator Ralph Hise, Pless likes to mess with "local bills" which can't be vetoed and which always represents some get-even move against local officials who have offended him or one of his buddies.

For example, last February, Pless filed a bill that would have stripped the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority of its ability to collect the county’s 4% room occupancy tax, effectively dismantling the organization. What actually passed upped the room tax to 6% and cut municipal officials out of membership on the board -- sticking it to Waynesville, Maggie Valley, and Lake Junaluska.

In April 2025 Pless introduced two bills that would eliminate county control of ambulance services statewide and change certification standards. Paramedics, medical technicians, and emergency service directors -- not to mention county commissioners -- got loud in their opposition. Rep. Pless doesn't take criticism gracefully (see photo above).

Pless has particularly been at war with Waynesville town government. He tried back in 2022 to get a bill through that would make all town elections in Haywood County partisan, but that failed in the Senate. He later backed a trio of candidates to beat the incumbents and take control, but every last one of Pless's guys lost.

Ken Brown

Cory Vaillancourt: "In 2023, Pless introduced legislation that removed Maggie Valley’s authority to exercise powers in its extraterritorial jurisdiction, effectively eliminating the town’s ability to regulate development in areas just outside its boundaries. This move was seen as retribution for the town’s temporary moratorium on RV parks and campgrounds, which Pless opposed .... Jim Owens, a Maggie Valley alderman, said at the time, 'A junior representative in Raleigh wants to decide what’s best for Maggie Valley. I don’t think that voters and the citizens in Maggie Valley appreciate that.' ”

We'll see next March whether enough Republicans in Haywood and Madison counties are fed up sufficiently with Pless to vote for a primary opponent (there may be up to 5 Republicans against him, according to rumor that Cory Vaillancourt reported, which is both a measure of dissatisfaction and a kind of guarantee that Pless can eek out a victory, with his opposition divided four ways).

A hotshot "sales executive" ("large corporations are my comfort zone" -- he really said that in his announcement) named Ken Brown is the first newbie Republican to announce against Pless for the primary. Brown's campaign theme goes directly to the heart of Pless's arrogance toward local government. Brown said, "I don’t care if local municipal governments are even doing something that I disagree with — if they’re duly elected and the people knew why they voted for these people and what they stood for, who am I to tell them what they ought to do?”

We'll see if that rhetorical question has legs.

These Mtn Republicans Abandoned Their Constituents

 

There have been three pieces of law aimed (more or less) at hurricane recovery passed by the Republican super-majorities in the NC state Senate and House. 

1. A “first step” relief bill passed the General Assembly just two weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated much of Western North Carolina. It provided around $270 million in aid, mostly to state agencies.

2. Two weeks after that, a second relief bill added around $600 million in new aid. Notably, "the bill did not include any direct grants to affected businesses that were underwater with COVID-era SBA loans" -- businesses unable to raise cash because of property loss and the cancellation of the Fall tourist season. (Cory Vaillancourt)

l to r, Gillespie, Clampitt, Pless

The pressure for more relief from the state's House and Senate quickly built. The state’s budget director Kristin Walker estimated $53.6 billion in damages across 39 federally declared disaster counties. Gov. Cooper proposed taking $3.9 billion from the “Rainy Day Fund,” including $475 million in grants for small businesses that were (and still are) drowning. Cooper was ignored. 

Instead, the bosses in the General Assembly came up with the massive garbage of S 382, "Disaster Relief 3/Budget/Various Law Changes," which contained only a promise of future appropriations for hurricane relief but no actual money, while its real purpose was to take away power from the governor and other state-wide Council of State members after they were elected but not yet in office. The rainy day fund stayed sacrosanct and very dry. So Gov. Cooper vetoed the monstrocity. Budget Director Kristin Walker had testified in a House hearing just prior to the veto-override vote in the House that the state had $9.1 billion "unappropriated in reserves across a variety of accounts," and that Gov. Cooper's suggestion of $3.9 billion for hurricane relief would still leave a very comfortable $5.5 billion in reserve.

No dice. The NCGOP wanted to cripple Democrats more than it wanted to help its own citizens.

We've written here about the three Republican House members who initially defied their caucus and voted against S 382 and who almost immediately a few days later reversed themselves and voted to ignore the pleas of their constituents. Reps. Mike Clampitt, Karl Gillespie, and Mark Pless abandoned their supposed principles and voted to make the sham disaster relief bill an official slap in the face for their drowned counties.

They're not the only Republicans representing Western North Carolina in the House. At least three other of those guys happily voted yes on the first passage of S 382, for whatever self-serving rationalizations they made for not actually appropriating any new direct aid for their counties:

Jake Johnson (Dist. 113). Youngest Republican in Raleigh and Majority Deputy Whip. Rather than working to get more direct money appropriated for Helene relief, whippersnapper Johnson took the opportunity to criticize the Cooper admin's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for -- get this -- enforcing river set-backs for rebuilding disappeared infrastructure: "Where a lot of the rebuilding is going to have to be done — and a lot of the cleanup, obviously, is near the river — one thing we need to look at is, you know, at least temporarily suspending some of the [regulations], how close you can work to a river and making sure that, you know, they're not cracking down on that," Johnson told Fox News Digital.

Ray Pickett

Ray Pickett (Dist. 93). Putting his "followship" skills on full display, Pickett echoed Johnson, tagged along with Johnson's opportunistic attack on DEQ, though his "me too" and "I was just going to say that too" came without any mention of "a specific policy he was most concerned about but said he was [vaguely] worried about DEQ's permitting and approvals process in general .... I absolutely share those concerns," Pickett told Fox News Digital. "I see it with some of our infrastructure that's going to have to be replaced. DEQ … has not always been the quickest agency we have." This was all tough-guy posturing against an environmental agency that had not, in fact, been any impediment at all to recovery but had rather been on the scene in the West since the middle of the flood.

Dudley Greene (Dist. 85). New in the House, representing hard-hit Avery, Mitchell, Yancey, and McDowell counties. He's mere furniture and does as he's told by the bosses.

3 Mountain Republicans Could Stop the Newest Power Grab

 

You know what power grab we're referencing in the title, right?

Reps. Gillespie, Clampitt, and Pless (l to r)

Three mountain Republican Reps in the NC House voted with all the Democrats against the so-called "Disaster Relief Bill" last Wednesday -- Mike Clampitt (Dist. 119, Jackson, Swain, Transylvania), Karl Gillespie (Dist. 120, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Macon), and Mark Pless (Dist. 118, Haywood, Madison). The bill in question, S 382, "Disaster Relief and Various Law Changes," passed any way, of course, without these three, but the kicker is that any one of them could provide the veto-affirming vote when S 382 inevitably comes back with Cooper's VETO stamped on it, as it surely will. 

Why would Clampitt, Gillespie, and Pless go against their caucas? It's largely speculation, but the reason for those noes seems logical: S 382 offered almost nothing in the way of actual hurricane relief. It was just cover for sneaking in a sweeping power grab, reducing the powers of newly elected Democrats just before they take office. The bill is actually kind of an insult to hurricane victims since it offers little or no cash relief to devastated businesses and homes. Only 20 pages of the 130-page bill even touched on Hurricane Helene, while the rest accomplished the most callous and naked overturning of election results by depriving newly elected Democrats to statewide Council of States offices the duties they ran for and were elected to perform. Phil Berger was in a big hurry to pass S 382 because he's about to lose his super-majority in the House for overturning vetoes. 

In other words, Phil Berger and Ralph Hise (who's lead author on S 382) and the rest of the bastards are using the plight of disaster-stunned citizens as a stalking horse for doing real damage to constitutional norms and the separation of powers. 

So it's an effing big deal that Reps. Clampitt, Gillespie, and Pless bucked their caucus. And shouldn't they, for the insult this bill represents to their districts? And come to think of it, where the hell was Ray Pickett? Pickett was quite visible in Watauga and Ashe during the immediate aftermath of Helene, a helpful (or at least helpful-seeming) high elected official who had contacts up the ladder to get help. He surely knows that S 382 does not come close to helping right now the unresolved disaster in the western counties.

If even one of the three reps. votes to uphold the Cooper veto, then this power grab dies a stumbling death.

Prediction: The three will have their arms twisted sufficiently or be bought off somehow, someway. The newly elevated Speaker-to-be Destin Hall of Lenoir has too much riding on his first legislative crisis of leadership. He can't seem weak.