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In the sprawling 1st Congressional District, which is expected to be the state’s most competitive in the fall, there are few policy differences between the two Republicans vying to represent northeast North Carolina.
Asked separately to name one thing they agree with President Joe Biden on, Laurie Buckhout and Sandy Smith take long pauses before arriving at the same answer.
“I think his ice cream flavors are pretty good,” says Smith.
“I don’t know. Promote the U.S. ice cream industry,” Buckhout concludes.
If Buckhout and Smith have any hope of ousting Democratic incumbent Rep. Don Davis in the newly redrawn district, they’ll need to appeal to moderates and independent voters likely to sway the general election.
But first, the congressional hopefuls must get through a March 5 primary that’ll be decided by some of the most fervent Republican voters in the state.
Smith and Buckhout are each presenting themselves to primary voters as the truest hardline conservative who will bring a fresh face to D.C., support former President Donald Trump’s agenda, reign in wasteful spending, and shut down the southern border.
Yet for their many similarities on the issues, the two candidates come from different backgrounds and have distinct styles of campaigning. Buckhout, 62, is an Army veteran who moved from Virginia to North Carolina in 2021. She’s been reluctant to go after Smith directly, instead presenting herself as the stable choice in the race.
“I don’t do sound bites,” Buckhout said. “I’m here to govern and legislate seriously and professionally and with everything I have.”
Smith, 49, has been more boisterous in taking on Buckhout and both state and national officeholders. The three-time candidate says she’s the person who will shake up Washington on behalf of farmers and everyday voters.
“They all know that Sandy Smith is a very, very strong candidate to take down,” Smith said. “So they figured, if they get a D.C. plant from northern Virginia, they could take me out. Unfortunately, this is a rural country district, not a country club district.”
Loud and Visible
At a Nash County event this month, Buckhout and Smith supporters expressed frustrations with the status quo. They see their preferred candidate as the one uniquely qualified to break through the noise and get something done.
Smith enters the race with the advantage of having run in 2020 and 2022. In both, she won contested GOP congressional primaries, only to fall short in the general elections to then-Rep. G.K. Butterfield and Davis, respectively.
She’s well known in the district, with an enthusiastic base of about 30 percent of the GOP primary electorate, based on her track record. But her November defeats have caused Republican insiders and some voters to question her electability.
“That’s a false narrative,” Smith said. “That is establishment narrative.”
At the meet-and-greet event in Nashville, Smith’s campaign was loud and visible. Smith brought a large campaign bus and had supporters in “Sandy Smith for Congress” apparel working the room and applauding at just the right moments in her stump speech. Smith demonstrated a level of on-the-ground enthusiasm that Buckhout, who was unable to attend the event after testing positive for COVID-19, did not.
Chris Foley, a Roanoke Rapids voter, was among those handing out flyers supporting Smith. He said she is the unabashed conservative most likely to break through GOP congressional leadership that he feels has blocked bold change.
“Establishment wants to keep establishment,” Foley said.
But in the rural district that covers 22 counties in central and northeast North Carolina, money goes far. Ad spending may have more of an impact than any number of Smith volunteers.
Parts of the district have seen growth, especially as some North Carolinians flow out of Raleigh and into more affordable cities, such as Rocky Mount, Greenville, and Wilson.
Even so, the vast majority of counties in the district saw their population decline from 2010 to 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, as North Carolina’s population increased by nearly one million people.
While the area stands to benefit from federal infrastructure projects and development in its small cities, it remains largely agricultural. Residents face high rates of poverty, a lack of educational opportunities, and poorer health outcomes.
“Establishment wants to keep establishment.”
Chris Foley, Roanoke Rapids voter
The district also has the greatest share of Black residents of any House district in the state, at 40 percent, though it remains a plurality white area. The district has been represented by a Black Democrat since 1992, but it’s been redrawn to be more competitive for Republicans.
Buckhout, a first-time candidate, is a 26-year Army veteran and founder of Corvus Consulting, which has advised the federal government on how to protect service members from improvised explosive devices. She sold the company for $9 million in 2019, and moved from Virginia to North Carolina two years later, buying a home in Edenton along the Albemarle Sound for nearly $2.7 million.
She’s now running a largely self-financed campaign and spending heavily on a pair of television ads. They’re aimed at boosting her name ID, highlighting her military and business experience, and presenting her as the staunch conservative most likely to crack down on unlawful immigration.
The messages from the self-identified “Reaganesque Republican” are resonating with some voters tired of D.C. inaction.
Thomas Winstead, a Nash County voter who unsuccessfully ran for the county commission in 2022, said he hasn’t met Buckhout but plans to support her, in part because of the television ads he’s seen about her military service. “In the military, you’ve got to stand your ground. And that’s what we need,” he said.
Buckhout has pledged to spend $1 million of her own money on the race. Her campaign also is benefiting from more than $178,000 in outside spending from the Congressional Leadership Fund, finance records show. The group is supported by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders.
“I’m a calm, reasonable leader with the background to do this,” she told The Assembly.
Smith’s campaign is anything but calm. She excoriates her critics, unabashedly supports Trump, and continues to spread misinformation about past defeats by accusing Democrats of rigging voting maps and hoarding mail-in ballots to sink her campaign.
“Our sitting congressman here in North Carolina’s 1st District is illegitimate,” Smith said.
While Democrats succeeded in getting some GOP-approved maps struck down in court, there’s little evidence to support Smith’s claims of widespread fraud.
Smith’s campaign had little more than $55,000 in available cash, as of Feb. 15. But she also had more than $143,000 in outstanding personal loans—more than $133,000 from previous elections and $10,000 this cycle.
On the first day of in-person early voting on February 15, Smith urged her supporters to immediately cast their ballots because “there is no telling what shenanigans they will do on election day with flooded pipes, road closures, machines down, and power outages.”
Skeletons in the Closet
On social media, Smith has taken aim at Buckhout and others. In one post on X (formerly known as Twitter), she tweeted a photo of herself holding a frying pan— a reference to domestic violence allegations that her former GOP rival, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson, publicly shared ahead of the 2022 primary.
One of Smith’s three ex-husbands accused her of threatening to hit him with the kitchen tool. Smith denies all allegations of domestic violence, saying she was the victim of abuse, not the perpetrator.
“That frying pan actually was given to me by a supporter,” Smith said of the one in the photo. “I knock on doors. I go to events. People bring me frying pans. … What I always say is what good southern woman doesn’t have a frying pan and a rolling pin?”
Buckhout isn’t chiming in on Smith’s family dynamics. “I don’t want to run a dirty campaign,” she said. “I don’t like talking about my opponent. She’s got a record there that stands on its own. I think I’ve got a record that stands on its own.”
“They figured, if they get a D.C. plant from northern Virginia, they could take me out. Unfortunately, this is a rural country district, not a country club district.”
Sandy Smith, Republican primary candidate
Opponents have had multiple cycles to find dirt on Smith. Revelations about Buckhout, however, are just now emerging.
During a 2017 trip to speak at a cybersecurity conference in Georgia, Buckhout was arrested for a DUI after refusing to take a blood-alcohol test.
She had drinks earlier in the night and got pulled over after forgetting to turn on her car headlights, according to Buckhout’s campaign. Records obtained by The Assembly show Buckhout had an over-the-limit blood-alcohol reading of .088 after the test was eventually administered. The DUI charge, which later got pleaded down to a reckless driving charge, was first shared by conservative activists on social media.
“Just getting in the car [was] poor judgment,” Buckhout said. She said she had traveled from her home in Virginia, was exhausted, and didn’t know she couldn’t refuse a blood-alcohol test. “I hadn’t even been to my hotel yet,” she said. “I was ready to be done and I didn’t know that you couldn’t say no to those things.”
She told voters at an event: “I’ve never had any court hearings where I need to come in and get hauled before a court.” Earlier this year, a lawyer for Buckhout submitted paperwork to get the conviction removed. While the record was removed, Buckhout’s campaign said it has made no effort to seal the record, which would be a separate process.
In an interview, Buckhout said she regrets her decision to drive after drinking, but is confident voters will still trust her because she has retained her security clearance. “If I had a DUI, if I had bankruptcy, if I had domestic violence, if I had gun violence, or if I had any of those issues, I would no longer have my top secret clearance.”
Smith said she takes greater issue with Buckhout’s messaging and efforts to get the matter erased than the DUI itself. “If they’re playing with something like this, what else are they going to lie to you about?”
Fighting for the Trump Base
Both candidates are using the issue of immigration to appeal to Trump’s most devout supporters. In her debut television ad, Buckhout describes her time as a Army colonel and commander of 800 troops in Iraq.
“I was fighting the very same people that Biden’s weak border lets into our country every day,” she says in the ad, later adding, “I’ve already fought these people and won.”
More than 2 million people were apprehended at the border in the last year, The New York Times reported in November. Of them, 169 were on the terrorist watch list, an increase from prior years.
Buckhout said her national security background will come in handy as she works to stop potentially dangerous migrants from entering the country. She cited a 60 Minutes report of Chinese immigrants using a gap in border fencing to enter into the U.S. illegally, and the Chinese government refusing to accept some people who the U.S. sought to deport to China.
“Nobody leaves China without them knowing where they’re going,” Buckhout said. “Why would military-age Chinese men be coming over here when the CCP knows where they’re going? And you’re also having folks coming in from China having anchor babies … From a national security point, I think it’s very dangerous and very concerning.”
The migrants told 60 Minutes they were escaping China’s increasingly repressive political climate and were looking for work. In recent years, the U.S. has dramatically reduced visas that allowed Chinese citizens to enter this country to visit, work or study.
Smith said that she’s more equipped to tackle immigration because she’s been to the southern border and “seen the invasion firsthand.” She supports building a wall to secure the border.
Both candidates want to see more funding to secure the U.S.-Mexico border before additional federal dollars are sent to support Ukraine, which has defended itself since Russia invaded the country two years ago. Buckhout called for a “strict accounting for the funds previously sent to Ukraine before any future funding is considered,” while Smith said Ukraine shouldn’t get “a darn dollar more until we have some accountability.”
Buckhout and Smith say they’ve supported Trump since his 2016 primary campaign. Both tout their ties to Trump and his inner circle.
Smith notes she’s made numerous appearances on a show hosted by Steve Bannon, the ex-chief strategist pardoned by Trump. She says she has also seen the former president in recent months while visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Buckhout touts an endorsement from Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s national security advisor before resigning 22 days into the Trump presidency amid reports he lied to administration officials about conversations he had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn pled guilty but was pardoned by Trump.
Trump is seen as unlikely to endorse until a Republican primary winner is selected. In 2022, he didn’t endorse Smith until she advanced to the general election.
Asked where she disagrees with Trump, Smith said she doesn’t support Trump’s criticism of evangelicals who have not pledged their support this year, and suggested the former president overspent in his first term. Buckhout said Trump may be too brash at times. But even their modest criticisms are heavily couched in praise.
“I think we’re going to have a different era of Trump, a more assertive, gloves off, let’s get some stuff done,” Smith said.
“Money plus Trump gets you 30 percent. But it’s the other 70 percent that make a difference.”
Sandy Roberson, 2022 GOP primary candidate
“I’m very supportive [of Trump], but I also see him as more Reaganesque than people want to see,” Buckhout said, saying Trump and Reagan had many similar policy objectives.
Smith has carved a lane as Trumpiest candidate in the race. Trump recently was ordered to pay $83 million for defaming author E. Jean Carroll, who won a sexual-abuse case against him last year.
Smith said the fine was reflective of a two-tiered system of justice she feels disproportionately targets Republicans over Democrats; she called Carroll “bonkers.” In an interview and a new television ad, Smith parroted Trump’s lies in which he falsely claimed to have won the 2020 presidential election.
Sandy Roberson, the Rocky Mount mayor who lost to Smith in the 2022 GOP primary, said he’s concerned about the direction the party is going. “It’s incumbent on me as a Republican to make change within the party to the extent that I can influence it,” he said.
He said he encouraged Buckhout to enter the race, has endorsed her, and is pleased this year’s GOP primary is a one-on-one matchup.
In 2020, Smith handily won a four-person primary. In 2022, she narrowly surpassed the 30 percent threshold to claim the nomination outright in an eight-candidate field. Roberson finished second and believes he would’ve won had the race gone to a runoff.
Roberson now hopes that Smith having a single GOP primary opponent will prevent her from securing the party’s nomination for a third consecutive time.
“Money plus Trump gets you 30 percent,” Roberson said. “But it’s the other 70 percent that make a difference.”
Bryan Anderson is a freelance reporter who most recently covered elections, voting access, and state government for WRAL-TV. He previously reported for the Associated Press and The News & Observer. You can subscribe to his newsletter here.