EXCLUSIVE — Richard Ojeda, the 2026 Democratic House nominee in North Carolina’s 9th District, debuted his first ad of the midterm election cycle Wednesday morning, accusing his opponent Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) of being the “biggest recipient of big pharmaceutical dollars” in Congress.
Hudson, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has held his seat since 2013 and put $200,000 into his own first television ad campaign just last week. President Donald Trump carried North Carolina’s 9th District, which stretches from Fayetteville to Greensboro and includes Fort Bragg, by 15 points in the 2024 general election.
Republicans had viewed the race as non-competitive, but Democrats moved the district to “in-play” after Ojeda’s internal polling showed the Democratic challenger closing the gap on Hudson. A poll conducted by Lake Research Partners on behalf of Ojeda’s campaign in early September found him trailing Hudson by just 4 points. The Cook Political Report still lists the district as favorable to Republicans.
Responding to the deteriorating political environment as the war in Iran keeps prices high, Republicans have increasingly reallocated advertising money to districts Trump won by double digits. The latest example came Wednesday when Congressional Leadership Fund, the PAC aligned with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), dropped more than $405,000 into a Charleston, South Carolina-area seat that Trump won by 13 points in 2024.
A Democrat last represented the area in 2012, when Hudson flipped the seat. It has since been redistricted several times.
Ojeda’s ad, filmed in front of the U.S. Capitol, will run on both television and in digital media markets. The spot features the retired U.S. Army Major claiming that Congress is a “corrupt mess” and that Hudson “voted to jack up your drug costs and double your healthcare premium.”
“Richard Hudson and his friends will not take on the drug companies, but I will, and I approve this message because we must end corruption here to make things cheaper here,” Ojeda says in the ad.
Ojeda said in a statement that “the man in charge of protecting the entire Republican House majority is spending to save his own seat, because the people of this district have figured him out. He is not the man he used to be.”
“Richard Hudson wants folks to believe he’s fighting corruption in Washington, but he’s the biggest rat in the hen house. “He took more money from drug companies than any other member of Congress, then voted to make your prescriptions and your health care cost more,” Ojeda added. “Now he’s on TV playing a good guy on stock trading while the bill he cosponsored exempts Donald Trump completely. He’s a MAGA puppet who is padding Donald Trump’s pockets while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet. That’s how corruption works in Washington.”
While uncommon, campaign committee bosses have been felled while holding the chairmanship. Previously, at least two Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairs lost their November reelection bids while steering the committee’s campaign spending, with former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) being the most recent instance in 2022. Former DCCC chairman Jim Corman (D-CA) similarly lost his election in November 1980.
Former NRCC Chairman Guy Vander Jagt (R-MI) lost a primary election to former representative and current U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra in 1992 following a round of redistricting. It was the first time Vander Jagt had faced a competitive challenge in nearly 30 years.
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While Hudson maintains his lead over Ojeda, Republicans are pulling money out of other races in the Tar Heel state, most notably spending backing Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.
Whatley trails former Gov. Roy Cooper by nearly 10 points according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, and Republicans are repurposing funds to defend more competitive Senate races in Iowa and Kansas.