NC House Speaker Tim Moore considering 2024 congressional run under new maps
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore is weighing whether to run for Congress under newly drawn districts that could be approved by state lawmakers as early as Wednesday.
"I'm going to look at that," Moore said when asked Tuesday if he plans to run for an open district in the new map that includes his home county, and no incumbent. "I'm looking at some other options, as well."
Moore, who previously said he’s not running for reelection to his seat in the legislature, has long been considered a possible congressional candidate.
The new maps, drawn by Republicans who control the state legislature, take what's currently a solidly Democratic seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in the Mecklenburg County suburbs — held for now by Rep. Jeff Jackson, D-Charlotte — and morph it into a solidly Republican district extending west into Gastonia and Moore's home of Kings Mountain, then north to Morganton.
It's believed to be the first time Moore has publicly confirmed he's considering a congressional run next year. Since saying this would be his last term as House speaker, he has remained coy about what exactly his future plans might be.
Moore is in the middle of his record-setting fifth two-year term as House speaker. He took over after the previous Republican speaker, Thom Tillis, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014.
He's had victories, such as convincing Rep. Tricia Cotham, R-Mecklenburg, to switch parties earlier this year and give Republicans a veto-proof supermajority at the state legislature. He's also faced scandals, most recently settling an alienation of affection lawsuit by a fellow Republican politician who accused Moore of breaking up his marriage by having an affair with his wife.
Not the first rumored campaign
This isn't his first flirtation with a congressional run. Moore was widely rumored to be planning a U.S. House campaign in 2022, after a previous round of redistricting also created an open seat around his Cleveland County home.
But then U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-Hendersonville, announced he was planning to leave his district in far-western North Carolina and run in that district instead. Cawthorn never mentioned Moore by name in that announcement but said he wanted to switch districts because he feared that an "establishment, go-along-to-get-along Republican will prevail there" otherwise.
Moore then announced that he'd be running for reelection to the state House in the 2022 midterms, not congress.
Those maps never ended up being used anyway; they were struck down in court as unconstitutionally gerrymandered by Republican lawmakers. And Cawthorn himself ended up losing in his GOP primary race, in part after Tillis's super PAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running ads against the controversial fellow Republican.
Looking ahead to 2024, it's unclear which other Republicans may run for that district, which is expected to be won by whoever emerges victorious from the GOP primary next year.
