Primary Focus: Could new maps for NC Senate District 22 lead to new representation?

With a redrawn NC Senate District 22, incumbent Mike Woodard and challenger Sophia Chitlik Abram face off in the first competitive Democratic primary in the district in over 10 years.

This BCPI: Open Sources (BCPI.OS) article is written by Chris Fedor.

In late October of last year, the North Carolina General Assembly overcame its (current) lingering legal challenges and passed final district maps for the next decade.

As a result, District 22, once covering Granville, Person and northern Durham counties is now circumscribed fully by Durham county alone - expanding farther south and east within its borders.

Above: District 22 as composed in 2020

Below: District 22 as will be used in 2024

Two months after this most recent district redraw was finalized, Sophia Chitlik Abram, a newcomer to Bull City politics, filed for her candidacy as a North Carolina State Senate candidate in District 22. For the first time in over 10 years, Mike Woodard is facing a primary challenger.

A Deeper Blue 22

The completed gerrymander has packed the Democratic voters in District 22 much tighter than they were in most previous maps. This “packing” of blue votes in 22 means that any Democratic candidate is likely to win their race more overwhelmingly. The motivation for this is so that any Republican in a tight race nearby (for example, District 18 in Wake County) will have fewer of those Democratic voters in their own district - and is thus more likely to narrowly squeak out a win as a result.

Above: Counts of the number of precincts in District 22, segmented by how heavily they voted for Biden in 2020. In blue, actual results from the 2020 general election from the precincts in the historic District 22. In red, results from the precincts that will constitute District 22 in the 2024 election.

Without the presence of rural Granville and Person counties, the new District 22 has many more precincts that had voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020. In the 2020 election, 56% of the precincts that were included in that District 22 were won by Biden. Of the precincts included in the new District 22, 77% were won by Biden in 2020.

Moreover, in the 2020 election it appears that Woodard tended to underperform in the most heavily Democratic precincts.

Above: Each dot represents the vote results in a precinct belonging to historical District 22. Moving across the x-axis shows the percentage of total votes Biden received in a given precinct. Moving along the y-axis shows how much better or worse Woodard did relative to Biden in the same precinct.

Looking at the lower right hand side of the above plot, Woodard performed approximately 3-6 points worse than Biden in precincts where Biden won > 80% of the voters. But, in precincts where Biden won < 50% of votes (top left), Woodard performed generally the same or slightly better than Biden.

As a Democrat that performs better in relatively more conservative areas, Woodard has become vulnerable to a primary challenger in a much more urbanized and Democratic-leaning district.

A Compromised Voting Record

One reason for this vulnerability may lay in the criticism that Woodard has on some occasions been too willing to vote with the Republican majority. Such legislation that has drawn ire from the Left include bills that allow lenders to increase the maximum loan interest rates and a bill increasing the auditing requirements for municipal and county budgets. Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, attempted to veto both of these bills. 

A generous interpretation might be that - given Woodard had represented two rural counties as well as part of Durham - he has tried to represent all of his constituents rather than just the ones that voted for him.

Given that the makeup of that constituency has changed significantly, there are questions whether Woodard will change enough along with it. One should note, after all, that both of those controversial bills were passed in 2023 - after the precincts had been broadly redrawn close to the current Durham-heavy configuration just three months before the 2022 primary.

Election Day Looms

Woodard can count recent endorsements from the Indy Week and Planned Parenthood as respected sources of validation of his tenure in the legislature. Meanwhile both the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People and the People’s Alliance have endorsed Sophia Chitlik Abram. Abram, a former executive coach and an investor with no local political record since moving to Durham in 2018, has made the pitch that she can better represent the interests of this district - even if it may be from a rather cramped Democratic corner of the General Assembly.

Early voting begins Thursday February 15. Election Day is Tuesday March 5.