Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey has won a third term, heading off a challenge from Democrat Natasha Marcus.
Causey had 52 percent of the vote as of early Wednesday morning, while Marcus was just shy of 48 percent.
Causey played a role in an FBI sting in 2019 that brought down a major North Carolina Republican donor for bribery and also entangled the head of the state GOP, a former congressman who’d once been the party’s nominee for governor. The scandal thrust Causey and his department into national headlines.
Causey has said fighting fraud “is a big part of what we do.” He more than tripled the number of agents investigating fraud, which he said has helped bring in more than $900 million to the state’s general fund. He challenged the biggest healthcare insurer in the state, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and saw fire departments improve their responsiveness by 80 percent during his tenure. He has said he wants to reform the Rate Bureau, oppose rate hikes, and add more fraud and abuse investigators.
He’s not without enemies in his own party. Ten Republican state senators sponsored a bill in March 2023 to strip the commissioner of his role as state fire marshal, a public humiliation for Causey, the first Republican ever elected to the job.
After lawmakers ultimately did yank the fire marshal responsibilities, Causey fired three top fire officials before they could head the newly independent agency; he said they had undermined his authority. The General Assembly required him to reinstate the employees.
Causey’s hiring practices also made statewide news when The News & Observer reported he paid a friend as much as $84,000 a year in state money to drive him from his home in Greensboro to Raleigh and across the country to meetings and conferences. The publication also reported he employed a political ally in a “make work” job and created regional districts and hired directors who had no bona fides in insurance but were owed political favors.
Marcus is a former litigator who has represented Mecklenburg County in the state Senate since 2019, but she was drawn out of her current district. Marcus criticized her opponent for insurance rate hikes in the past several years, and she lists fair coverage and better health care costs as priorities.
Mathias Marchington works with the audience team at The Assembly.