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From Staff Reports
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The local Democratic primary is a “coronation” rather than a campaign. Moe Davis, a Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, charged as he dropped out of the race on Aug. 22,
Davis, a former Guantanamo Bay chief prosecutor who lost to Madison Cawthorn for the same seat in 2020, posted the following message on Facebook:
“I’m grateful to everyone who supported my effort to kick ass for the working class in Western North Carolina, but at the end of the day you can’t overcome the overwhelming weight of the party’s dynasties who have aligned behind the status quo.
“Tonight, I concede to John Ager. He cleared the deck to pass down his state house seat to his son Eric in 2022 and he’s doing the same for his son Jamie in 2026 … political office is a family heirloom that gets handled down like it’s granddaddy’s pocket watch.....”
Asheville television station WLOS (News 13) on Aug. 26 noted that “John Ager is a former member of the North Carolina General Assembly; his father was a United States congressman, one of his sons, Eric, represents Buncombe County in Raleigh and another son, Jamie, is running to unseat Chuck Edwards in Washington, D.C.”
Meanwhile, Jamie Ager addressed the topic of “dynastic entitlement” in a July 28 interview with The Smoky Mountain News.
“At the end of the day, I care, and I think caring is why I’m running, not because of trying to uphold some image or whatever,” the SMN quoted Ager as saying.
To that end, News 13 quoted Chris Cooper, political science professor and analyst at Western Carolina University, as saying, “This Jamie Ager) is somebody who has a last name associated with politics, but doesn’t really brand as an elite at the same time. That’s a tough recipe to find in American politics nowadays, the Democrats think they’ve have found it in Jamie Ager,.
“Putting aside the specifics of his argument, I think Moe Davis was probably correct that the Democratic Party is lining up behind Jamie Ager,” Cooper told News 13.
The TV station added, “Cooper believes, at this point, Ager is the Democratic front-runner; he’s a fourth-generation farmer who runs Hickory Nut Gap with his wife.”
The candidate filing period for the 2026 General Election begins on Dec. 1. The Primary Election will be held on March 3, 2026.
Moe Davis’ statement to the Daily Planet
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following statement on his decision to bow out of the N.C. 11 congressional race by former candidate Moe Davis was submitted to the Daily Planet upon request of the newspaper on Aug. 30.
The viewpoint of congressional candidate Jamie Ager also was requested — on Davis’ departure from the race — by the Daily Planet, but no response was forthcoming by the mid-morning Sept. 1 presstime of this edition.
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When I ran for Congress in 2020, Wayne Goodwin was the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Kathy Sinclair was the chair of the NC 11 Democrats, and Jeff Rose was chair of the Buncombe County Democrats, and they were all explicitly clear that the party wouldn’t support or oppose any candidates until after the primary.
I entered the race believing that those same rules applied, but there’s new leadership at the state, district and county level and they changed the rules and decided to recruit and support another candidate to keep me off the ballot.
Once party leaders made it known who they had chosen, fundraising fell off significantly and made it financially impossible to sustain the campaign through the primary in March.
In the final 30 days of the campaign, after party leaders had made their choice known, I raised less than one-tenth what I raised in the first 30 days, and I ended my campaign while there was still enough money remaining to pay the bills.
Last Tuesday (Aug. 26), the Democratic National Committee enacted a rule requiring party officials to remain neutral in primary races. That should apply here in North Carolina as well.
Over 2,500 people donated to my campaign and dozens more put their time and energy into the campaign believing it would be a fair and impartial race.
It’s a disservice to all of those people and it subverts democracy when party elites put their thumb on the scale and choose the candidate for the voters.
Saying “our party isn’t as unethical as their party” isn’t a compelling argument for Democrats to make.
—Moe Davis
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