Race To Watch: North Carolina's 8th District
By Kyle Trygstad
It took two tries but Larry Kissell finally won a North Carolina congressional seat in 2008. The underfunded candidate with national party support outperformed Barack Obama to knock off a five-term Republican incumbent in one of the state's few swing districts.
But in a far less welcoming year for Democrats, Kissell enters his first re-election campaign as a top Republican target. And although Harold Johnson hasn't yet made it to the top tier of the GOP's Young Guns campaign organization program, Republicans have what both parties say is a legitimate challenger.
Johnson, a well-known former TV sportscaster in Charlotte, dropped $240,000 of his own money during the primary process, which was extended by seven weeks for a runoff with Tea Party-backed Tim D'Annunzio. The coffers-draining runoff will likely affect Johnson's second-quarter fundraising report, but many expect him to surpass Kissell in the coming months.
Kissell, a former schoolteacher and textile worker, defeated Robin Hayes in 2008 by a 10-point margin, two years after falling just a few hundred votes short of victory. After being outspent four-to-one in 2006, Kissell was again outspent in 2008, this time by more than two-to-one, though that was supplemented by $2.4 million in spending by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
However, the freshman lawmaker may not have as much help this time around, as the well-funded DCCC will need to spread the wealth to save the party's House majority. Kissell also won't have the luxury of Obama at the top of the ticket or his hundreds of organized volunteers blanketing the state.
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