From long shot to Congress: How LaKesha Womack beat Tim Moore
by Rachel Black and Tony Mecia
The Election Hub and The Charlotte Ledger
In her first-ever political campaign, LaKesha Womack didn’t raise much money, and most political analysts thought she would lose.
The Democrat was running for Congress in North Carolina’s 14th congressional district — a district that was redrawn to favor the GOP in 2023. Womack’s opponent, Republican incumbent and former N.C. House speaker Tim Moore, voted in the General Assembly to gerrymander the district before successfully running for the seat in 2024.
Now, the 14th congressional district covers western Mecklenburg and five counties to the west – a district that Republican President Donald Trump won in 2024 by 14 points.
The Cook Political Report, one of the most respected political forecasts, rated the district as “solid Republican.”
Yet Womack said that she didn’t want to discount herself by running for what some would consider an “easier” seat to win, and she campaigned on what mattered most to voters she talked to: affordability and accountability in politics. And on Wednesday morning, she found herself as a newly elected member of Congress, toppling Moore, who was once one of the state’s most powerful political figures.
With all precincts accounted for, Womack leads Moore by about 6,400 votes, or 51.1% to 48.9%, which is a seemingly insurmountable lead, even with provisional and overseas ballots not yet counted. Womack said Moore had not called to concede or to congratulate her, as of 11 a.m. Wednesday.
“I'm just eternally grateful to the voters,” Womack told The Election Hub on Wednesday morning. “We ran a campaign that was probably different than most congressional campaigns because we didn't focus on raising money; we focused on building community — and the community really stuck with us. They listened to our message. They got behind the priorities of a very diverse congressional district, and we all agreed that we wanted accountability in Washington, D.C., and we need affordability in our communities. They rallied behind that message and showed up on Election Day.”
It was one of several seemingly unlikely victories on a day filled with Democratic wins across the country, and it was powered by a strong turnout of Democratic voters in mostly Republican counties such as Gaston and Cleveland, according to an Election Hub analysis of election results. Dwindling Republican margins in the suburban and rural counties were outweighed by stronger Democratic margins in Mecklenburg.
Campaign finance filings from mid-October show Womack was outspent 34-to-1: Moore spent $1.9M on the race, with donations from the National Rifle Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and the banking and utility industries. Womack, in contrast, spent just $56,000.
Womack is a community organizer and ordained minister who said on the campaign trail that her faith and her politics go hand-in-hand. She has a 20-year-old son and said that she was concerned about his future in a difficult economy, and that she was worried about her aging parents losing their Social Security benefits. She used those personal experiences to appeal to voters who also felt disappointed by Moore’s leadership, from Democrats and independents to some disaffected Republicans.
She said her team and supporters were “elated” with the results and they had their own watch party at Piedmont Social House in Charlotte’s Steele Creek area.
“I think that people are just so overwhelmed with all the chaos and everything that's happening that people just want to restore some sanity back to Congress,” she told The Election Hub. “They're tired of everything. And so we're really excited to be a part of an incoming class that has a clear majority and a mandate from the American people to change the direction that this country is headed in.”
She said she and her team were still figuring out what their first order of business will be once she’s sworn into Congress, but she thinks it could be healthcare-related, since many voters she spoke to said that was important to them.
An Election Hub analysis of voting data shows that while Womack’s vote total was 88% of what the Democrat running for the seat in 2024 received, Moore’s share was only 60% of his 2024 level.
In 2024, Moore won by about 65,000 votes. He lost Tuesday by about 6,400 – a 71,000-vote swing in two years. He lost ground in every county in the district.
The biggest switch came in Gaston County, where Moore racked up a 30,000-vote advantage in 2024, which slipped to only a 5,200-vote advantage in 2026 – a 19 percentage-point difference that was the largest of the six counties in the district.
In addition to the 25,000-vote swing from Gaston, Womack also picked up an additional 15,000 votes from Mecklenburg and 11,000 in Cleveland County.
Moore might not have seen it coming. He told a reporter with WUNC in mid-October that “I'm in a seat that's not considered competitive, but I'm running a race as if I was.” He said he’d been knocking on doors and talking to voters “even though I probably wouldn't have to if I didn't want to.”
In October, Womack was served with a felony criminal summons at a campaign event stemming from allegations that she failed to return a rental car in 2019. The summons was originally issued in January 2020 but was returned unserved the following month. The charge remains pending. Womack said she was experiencing homelessness at the time and was initially unaware of the case against her because she lacked a mailing address. She also said that she believed the matter had been long-resolved.
Asked about that on Wednesday, she said that after her court date on Nov. 10, she hopes to put the ordeal to bed and focus on her work to come.
“They [voters] saw through what it was, which was a political attack,” she said. “…He [Moore] didn't have any issues to run on.”
The Election Hub reached out to Moore’s campaign for comment, but has not received a response.
Rachel Black is a reporter and writer for The Election Hub. Reach her at rachel@theelectionhub.org.
The Election Hub is a project of the Civic Knowledge Initiative, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Charlotte that makes it easy for every citizen to find, understand and act on reliable information about their local government and elected officials.
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