This US House district was once a political battleground. Now it shows why Congress is dysfunctional
RALEIGH, N.C.: In 2022, Democrat Wiley Nickel ran as a moderate and narrowly won North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District by about 9,000 votes. Two years later, the current congressman, Republican Brad Knott, ran as a conservative and coasted into the US House by more than 70,000 votes. Voters didn’t change their minds. Politicians changed their voters. The Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s congressional map to transform what was one of the last remaining swing districts in the South to a safe GOP seat. Lawmakers split the rectangular 13th District into an hourglass shape that carved out Democratic voters in Raleigh and replaced them with a swath of rural counties reaching up to the Virginia border. That decline accelerated over the past year after Republican President Donald Trump sparked a partisan redistricting battle. The number of swing districts fell from 45…
