Valerie Foushee faces contentious rematch with Nida Allam in NC’s bluest district

North Carolina’s bluest congressional district is once again home to a contentious and expensive primary between two Democrats — each of whom claims to be the progressive leader the state needs to stand up to President Donald Trump.

The incumbent, Rep. Valerie Foushee, is seeking her third term in Congress representing the 4th district — which encompasses Orange and Durham counties and parts of Chatham and Wake. She’s spent decades in public service and held leadership roles in Congress.

She’s up against Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, a 32-year-old progressive activist who would become the first Muslim from North Carolina elected to Congress, if she won.

Allam, who is endorsed by progressive U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has positioned herself as an anti-establishment figure who argues that mainstream Democrats have failed to mount a meaningful resistance to Trump.

“We have the opportunity to put up a strong fight against Trump and his right-wing MAGA Republican friends and corporate billionaire friends,” she told The News & Observer. “... We should be putting up a fight in our safe blue seats, because if we’re just going to concede to everything in the administration because we’re in the minority, then what’s the point of even having this safe blue seat?”

Foushee, who is 69, has the backing of North Carolina’s top Democratic politicians, including Gov. Josh Stein and former Gov. Roy Cooper. She also recently secured the endorsements of over 50 Black state and local elected leaders.

And while Allam has positioned herself to the left of Foushee, the congresswoman is endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and said of her opponent: “I was a progressive before she was born.”

“I have served in a manner that I think is representative of the values of this district,” Foushee told The N&O. “... There is no one who’s better suited, who has the experience, who has the knowledge, or who has established the relationship with other members of Congress to get stuff done.”

A rematch of NC’s most expensive Democratic primary

This year’s race is a rematch, with Foushee having beat Allam in 2022 in what became the most expensive Democratic congressional primary in the state’s history.

Individual donors, a cryptocurrency billionaire and pro-Israel PACs funneled millions into the race last time around, most of which went toward Foushee’s campaign.

The spending, which included over $3 million from AIPAC, became a key point of criticism for Allam’s 2022 campaign, and remain so now.

Foushee has pledged not to accept donations from AIPAC this cycle, but has continued to receive contributions from PACs associated with a variety of corporations, including defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

“You can’t say you’re pro-peace when you’re still cashing checks from the very people who want the United States to be endlessly funding war,” Allam said.

Foushee said the majority of her contributions came from people in her district, or from corporations that employ her constituents.

“If you look at my voting record, you will clearly see that no corporation has impacted my votes,” she said. “I think that’s clear, but I don’t feel like I need to refute what is unsubstantiated that comes from (Allam).”

Justice Democrats, a group that supports progressive challengers in Democratic primaries, has endorsed Allam, accusing Foushee of being beholden to corporate donors.

“They rely on corporate PACs or right-wing lobbies to win their elections, so they rely on them to dictate their policy priorities and their fight — that’s just not what we need in this moment,” Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, said. “This moment demands not only fighters, but fighters with the moral clarity and political courage to take on both Republican authoritarianism and Democratic corporatism and billionaire greed altogether.”

But House Democratic Leader Robert Reives, one of Foushee’s numerous supporters in state politics, argued that she could never be corrupted by wealthy donors.

“Who you do or don’t take money from absolutely doesn’t have anything to do with who you’re going to be as a congressperson,” Reives said. “And if you feel like that — that if you take money from somebody that you’re beholden to them — I don’t think that Congress is a good place to be.”

Recently, Foushee criticized a pro-Allam ad released by a progressive PAC called Leaders We Deserve.

The ad in question says Foushee “only works for the big guys” and criticizes her acceptance of campaign contributions tied to tech and crypto corporations.

But Foushee noted that Leaders We Deserve received $400,000 from Ronald Conway, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and angel investor, during the 2024 election.

“While one of my opponents receives financial support from an out-of-state super PAC funded by tech billionaires, I will continue to be transparent about my campaign’s contributions and expenditures, and I look forward to continuing to fight for our community in Washington,” she said.

Conway has not donated to Leaders We Deserve this cycle, per the most recent FEC reports.

Foushee has accepted contributions from PACs for tech companies such as Meta and Google.

Responses to Israel-Hamas war a focus

The debate over how each candidate finances their campaign is, in some ways, inextricable from the debate over how each candidate has responded to the war between Israel and Hamas.

Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed over 1,200 people, over 70,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in Israel’s military attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Allam, who has long been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, has often accused Foushee of being too tepid in her condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

While Foushee did join the calls for a ceasefire a few months after the Oct. 7 attacks, she later visited Israel on two separate occasions and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a move that drew swift criticism from Allam, who noted that the visit came after the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab by Israeli forces.

“To take a trip and take smiling photo-op pictures with the man behind her murder and her family’s murder, I – it doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I cannot comprehend how that even seems to be OK for somebody.”

Foushee said it was not her decision to meet with Netanyahu, who she said arranged the meetings himself after hearing that a delegation from Congress was coming to Israel. During the meetings, she said she and her colleagues pushed for a ceasefire.

“I can’t think of anybody who thinks that Netanyahu is operating in a humanitarian way,” Foushee said. “I think that there should be a focus on humanitarian aid, and I have voted for that. I think that as Gaza is rebuilt, it should be rebuilt without President Trump’s influence.”

Foushee has also signed on to a bill known as the Block the Bombs Act, which would prohibit the sale of offensive weapons to Israel.

She has not, however, gone so far as to label Israel’s attacks on Gaza a “genocide” against Palestinians, as Allam and a U.N. commission have.

Asked if she would agree with the U.N. assessment, Foushee said: “I haven’t seen the report.”

Foushee and Allam campaign on reining in ICE

Foushee and Allam’s faceoff comes as Democrats hope to retake the majority in Congress and rein in what they see as unprecedented abuses of power from the Trump administration.

A major part of that response, both said, would be addressing the rapid expansion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been deployed across the country as Trump pushes for severe immigration enforcement.

At least eight people have died in interactions with ICE this year, according to the Guardian, including Alex Pretti and Renee Good — both of whom were fatally shot on camera in Minneapolis.

Foushee, who worked for the Chapel Hill Police Department for 21 years, called ICE a “rogue agency.”

“I know what serving and protecting looks like,” she said. “It does not look like masked men and women who jump out of vehicles and burst out people’s windows and pull women out of the cars by their hair... and it does not look like grabbing a 5-year-old child and detaining them.”

Allam and Foushee have both held “know your rights” trainings in the community to teach residents about their legal rights in dealings with ICE or U.S. Border Patrol.

Since Trump took office, ICE agents have arrested over 3,300 people in North Carolina, according to the University of California Berkeley. In the fall, Border Patrol was deployed to Charlotte and the Triangle for multi-day operations in which hundreds of arrests were made.

Allam has called for the complete abolition of ICE.

“It’s not an agency that can be reformed or changed,” she said. “It was an agency that was created under the Bush administration to terrorize my community — the Muslim community — in a post-9/11 America, and now Trump is using them as his private Gestapo.”

Foushee said she supports “defunding” ICE, but said the country still requires some method of immigration enforcement.

“There needs to be an agency for that, and I think that we kid ourselves if we say we don’t need such an agency,” she said. “Do we need ICE as it currently is? No — I would almost say, H no.”

District funding and data centers

Midterms are generally seen as a referendum on the president’s political party, prompting a focus on national issues.

But Foushee and Allam’s contributions to the local community — and ability to bring federal dollars to the district — are also crucial.

Just last week, Foushee announced she’d secured over $21 million in federal funds for a variety of community projects across the district, including water infrastructure and affordable housing.

And while she’s never served in Congress, Allam also has funding accomplishments to point to.

In 2022, as a Durham County commissioner, she helped pass the largest school bond in county history, intended to provide over $500 million toward building new schools and expanding Durham Technical Community College.

Other local issues have come to the forefront of the campaign, including the planned construction of a data center in Apex, which is located in the district.

Residents have voiced environmental concerns about the center, with over 4,500 signing on to a petition opposing the site.

Allam has endorsed Sanders’ call for a moratorium on new data centers until Congress passes comprehensive regulations on artificial intelligence. AI has generated booming demand for more data centers.

“I know that AI is going to be a part of our future,” she said. “It’s not about killing AI, but it’s about how do we control and manage the growth that we’re seeing? Because right now, these corporations like Meta and others that are building these data centers — it’s for them. It’s about their bottom line. It’s about their profits.”

But Foushee, who has served on two congressional task forces exploring potential AI regulations, said the decision on data centers should be left to local leaders.

“I’m hearing a strong opposition to that (Apex) location, so I think it’s up to the elected leaders in that location to determine, by listening to their constituents, what’s in their best interest,” she said. “I just don’t believe in second-guessing people who are on the ground and understand the situation better than me.”

‘How are you going to make my life better?’

In 2022, Allam lost by nine points to Foushee amid a crowded primary field that included former “American Idol” star Clay Aiken.

This year, only one other candidate has entered the fray: Durham substitute teacher Mary Patterson.

A smaller field could help Allam consolidate some of the voters she lost last time around, but she still may face a lack of name recognition when pitted against a longtime fixture of North Carolina and Orange County politics.

Andrabi acknowledged that the race, like most that Justice Democrats get involved in, is an uphill battle for Allam.

“None of these fights are ones that we are supposed to win,” he said. “We are outspent, we are out-resourced — but what we have always more than the incumbents are people power and the ability to organize masses of people around our shared values and our shared issues.”

Reives, however, said that the state needs a “trusted voice” like Foushee, who has been able to serve as a chair or ranking member of several congressional committees and secure funding for her district.

“Most Americans and most North Carolinians don’t cleanly fit into a party one way or another,” he said. “At the end of the day, what they want to know is, ‘How are you going to make my life better?’”

Early voting begins on Feb. 12 and Election Day is March 3.

This story was originally published February 12, 2026 at 5:00 AM.

Kyle Ingram

The News & Observer

Kyle Ingram is the Democracy Reporter for the News & Observer. He reports on voting rights, election administration, the state judicial branch and more. He is a graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill.