Rocky Mount mayor running in NC’s swing district now has a contested GOP primary
The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting Eastern North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District to flip red, and with two Republicans in the primary, the race is now being closely watched.
Since April, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson, a Republican, has been campaigning to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Rep. Don Davis. On Wednesday morning, state Sen. Bobby Hanig announced he, too, would run for the Republican nomination.
Roberson, 58, was born in Greenville and spent the majority of his life in Rocky Mount. He owned Community Home Care & Hospice, a business he says was valued at more than $100 million then set his sights on politics after being frustrated by the negative headlines coming out of his community.
Hanig grew up in Virginia Beach but fell in love with Currituck County after learning to surf in middle school, and says he vowed to become a North Carolina resident. He would travel the country working as a railroad mechanic before rooting himself on the beaches of Currituck County and building his own business. A lack of help from his county commissione led to Hanig running for office.
Both men agree that a Republican needs to take control of the district, which has been occupied by a Democrat since 1899.
The 1st Congressional District is made up of North Carolina’s 22 most northeastern counties. It’s the state’s only competitive district, where either a Republican or Democrat could win.
Davis, 54, of Snow Hill has represented the district for two terms, beginning in 2022, and is known for being unafraid to vote against his own party. He’s ranked by Voteview, a website that tracks the ideologies of members of Congress, as being more conservative than 84% of other Democrats in the House.
Roberson said he believes he is the only Republican who can raise the money needed to win and is the only one with the history of being elected in a majority-minority city. Roberson reported raising more than $260,000 in his second-quarter filings, and wrote his campaign a $2 million loan. He said the district needs a member of Congress with conservative values to move forward.
“I have a history of significant job creation in our district, just in our business privately through the years, and so I do believe that I can make that happen,” Roberson said. “I know that I can make that happen.”
Who is Sandy Roberson?
Roberson compares his parents to June and Ward Cleaver from “Leave it to Beaver.” He calls them God-fearing people who ran a good household and had good work ethics.
“Dinner was on the table by 5:30 p.m.,” he said.
Roberson said he’s very proud of his dad’s story growing up on a farm in Bear Grass. His dad attended East Carolina University, the only of his siblings to go to college. He paid for his education by raising tobacco every summer and taking grapes from the sides of fields and freezing them, to take to the tobacco market, before refrigeration was a thing.
“He was a hustler who was willing to work to make it happen,” Roberson said. “That’s something I’ve always been proud of.”
His parents took over a skilled nursing business when Roberson was around 9 years old, and then a nursing home.
They expanded that business to 1,000 beds.
His mom “worked side-by-side with my dad,” he said. “They were partners in every single regard.”
Roberson attended Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia after graduating from Rocky Mount High School. He then joined his parents in the health care industry and ran the company until his father sold it three years after he took over.
Then they acquired a hospice business, expanding it in 12 years from a $500,000 value to $100 million before selling it, he said. It was the largest hospice provider in the state.
Selling the company, and divorcing his first wife at the same time, sent him from 500-mile-an-hour days to being able to pick up his newspaper and read what was going on in his community, he said — and it upset him.
“I was really dismayed with a number of headlines,” Roberson said. “It really didn’t feel like our community was heading in the right direction.”
He saw racial disharmony that he felt was slowing down the city’s growth. There were allegations of corruption and misuse of funds. Companies weren’t coming to the area because of the news, he said.
“The question was how do you get involved to try to create unity; and I know that’s kind of an overused term, but how do you create unity to be able to move forward on the 85% of things that can,” he asked.
He believes he helped do that after running for mayor in 2019.
Discovering politics
“I’m going to be honest, I never anticipated that I was going to win,” Roberson said. “My whole goal was to try to change the narrative, to try to change the conversation.”
After winning, he also got remarried.
He said people encouraged him to run for Congress, which he did unsuccessfully in 2022 in a Republican primary-election field of eight candidates, which he adds with a laugh included two Sandys and two Robersons.
This Roberson finished second behind Sandy Smith, who captured just 2,018 votes more. Smith ultimately lost to Davis in the general election.
In 2024, Roberson recruited Laurie Buckhout to run on the Republican ticket.
“I was tremendously supportive of Laurie,” he said. “I think she is a rock star. She’s awesome. I begged her to run again this time, because she had the most recency factor in terms of name recognition.”
But Buckhout is now serving as the Department of Defense’s deputy assistant secretary for cyber policy.
She donated $7,000 to Roberson’s campaign. So has her husband.
Supporting Trump
In Washington, Roberson said, he wants to support President Donald Trump and his policies.
Roberson detractors point to comments he made about Trump in 2024 to the news outlet Stateline.
Roberson criticized Vice President Kamala Harris and gave Trump credit for providing a better economy and financial position to his community than President Joe Biden. However, he said the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and “the chaos of the last Trump presidency” make it hard to support Trump.
“At some levels, it feels like I’m voting for somebody who wants to either be a dictator or somebody who wants to create a socialist state,” Roberson said. “And I’m not in either place.”
Roberson told McClatchy on Wednesday that in the past he used some unfortunate terminology. He said Trump is a disrupter and that allows him to execute policies that normally take years.
“I believe his policies are spot-on,” Roberson said. “I don’t always understand how he is moving, but he hasn’t briefed me on it. I don’t have that. I do know that I’ve had a number of positive conversations with the White House, and we continue to have some of those, and I am supportive of the president.”
He added that he voted for Trump all three times.
Roberson said that support extends to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and he wants to be part of that team.
Supporting the 1st District
Roberson said he likes Davis; he thinks he’s charming.
“The challenge is he has to kiss the wrong ring, and what I mean by that is he has to answer to a different set of rules in order to be able to get those committee assignments and to be able to represent the district appropriately, and the progressive side of the Democratic Party is just not something I can believe in,” Roberson said. “Ever.”
Roberson said the district has been economically depressed for the majority of his life, and it needs economic development. He thinks some infrastructure projects would impact the region tremendously.
But he’s also clear-eyed that a freshman congressman can only do so much, and said he would work on what is needed to make a difference for his community, like finding the right committee assignments or working with the right lawmakers.
This story was originally published September 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
