A political rematch in the Triangle is shaping into an intensely competitive primary election as two Democrats with solidly liberal records seek to position themselves as the better choice to fight Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda in Washington.
The race has grabbed the attention of some of the most high-profile progressive officials, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who plans to visit the Triangle Friday in support of a challenger in the race.
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U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee is seeking a third term representing the state’s 4th Congressional District. To earn it, she’ll have to defeat a challenger she already beat once, in 2022: Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam.
The heart of the district is Durham and Orange counties, two of the most politically progressive places in the South. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is almost guaranteed to win the general election and represent the state in Congress; only about 26% of the district’s voters backed Trump in the 2024 election.
That’s where Sanders comes in. The progressive independent from Vermont plans to speak in Durham Friday with Allam, seeking to boost enthusiasm for her campaign as early voting has begun. It’s billed as part of Sanders’ national "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, where he says he will be "hitting the road to have real discussions across America on how we move forward to take on the oligarchs and corporate interests who have so much power and influence in this country."
Foushee, meanwhile, boasts the endorsement of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, former Gov. Roy Cooper and others.
The two women each have a record of voting for progressive stances — Allam in Durham County government and Foushee in her years of service in Congress, the state legislature and Orange County government. They’re each seeking to appeal to local voters in the primary who are angry with Trump and concerned by the broader state of American government and democracy.
On Allam’s website, she promises “to build a brighter future for the Research Triangle, where our democracy works for all of us and everyone has access to a living wage, affordable healthcare, a great public education, and a livable planet.”
On Foushee’s website, she promises to “do everything in her power to stop Trump’s attack on our democracy” and that she will “keep fighting for opportunity, dignity, and a future where everyone has a fair shot.”
Trump will also be in North Carolina on Friday, speaking around the same time as Sanders, in a visit to Fort Bragg. The president and first lady Melania Trump are set to meet at Pope Army Airfield with military families and members of the special forces who carried out an operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro.
In 2022, Foushee defeated Allam by about 10 percentage points. And this time around, Foushee has several advantages she didn’t have in 2022: She’s been in Congress for several years now, able to point to her stances, and fields an experienced campaign team. Incumbent members of Congress rarely lose reelection for those reasons and more.
But Foushee also has one notable disadvantage compared to 2022: Money.
Much of the financial support that brought Foushee over the finish line originally isn’t expected to be there this time around. And Allam has put on a strong showing of grassroots support, kicking off the new year with a six-figure advantage over Foushee in their campaign bank accounts.
In the 2022 Democratic primary for this seat, outside groups spent more money on the race than all eight candidates combined. Foushee, Allam, former American Idol star Clay Aiken and other candidates made for a crowded primary that year to replace David Price, a longtime congressman who retired from office.
Foushee won after political action committees backed by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and the Israel lobby poured millions of dollars into ads on Foushee’s behalf.
But now Bankman-Fried is in prison for fraud, and Foushee has since sworn off the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group has fallen out of favor with some Democrats due to its support of Israel’s war in Gaza and AIPAC’s support of Republicans who defended the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.
Follow the money
The two women are neck-and-neck in campaign fundraising — a rare position for an incumbent such as Foushee to be in against a challenger — after each having raised more than $300,000.
And Allam went into 2026 with more money left to spend. A main reason for that, however, is that Foushee already has a strong campaign apparatus. Allam, on the other hand, was building her campaign from scratch in the final month of the year.
Foushee’s campaign spent $244,000 on its operations in 2025, which was about 10 times more than Allam spent.
So as of Dec. 31, Allam had $306,000 cash on hand, compared to Foushee’s $194,000.
Who’s funding them
The latest campaign finance records end Dec. 31. The numbers may have changed in the months since, but in 2025 Foushee’s campaign brought in more money from political groups and corporate PACs than it did from individual people.
Foushee’s biggest supporters were PACs representing pilots, machinists, government workers, defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies and anesthesiologists.
Some of Foushee’s notable individual donors include former UNC Board of Trusteers members real estate developer Roger Perry and financier Sallie Shuping-Russel, former President Barack Obama’s personal aide Reggie Love, solar energy entrepreneur Richard Harkrader, civil rights lawyer Ted Shaw, and two top advisors to ex-governor Roy Cooper, Ken Eudy and L.T. McCrimmon.
Allam’s campaign is funded largely by small donors, but her biggest financial supporters are Durham businesswoman Rebecca Feinglos and five others from New York, California and Illinois. several politically progressive PACs. One of those is Leaders We Deserve, a group founded by gun control advocate David Hogg with the goal of electing young, progressive candidates. Allam is 32. Foushee is 69.
Shift in ad spending
While it was Foushee who benefitted from a blitz of outside ad spending by national political groups in 2022, this year it’s Allam who’s getting that attention.
Public records at the FCC show that Foushee has spent tens of thousands of dollars on local television ads for her campaign, but that no outside groups are running additional ads on her behalf on local television stations.
The opposite is true of Allam, who isn’t spending her own campaign cash on ads as national groups pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race on her behalf.
In addition to the $5,000 that Leaders We Deserve has given directly to Allam’s campaign, the group is also backing her campaign indirectly. It spent $116,000 buying two weeks’ worth of ads on WRAL earlier this month, according to FCC records, and tens of thousands more on other local television stations, too.
Another pro-Allam group, called the American Priorities PAC, has spent at least $92,000 on local TV ads this week for messaging that criticizes Foushee over her past support from AIPAC and the cryptocurrency industry.
There’s almost zero public information about the group, which only came into existence last week and has not yet filed reports showing who’s funding it or which other candidates it’s supporting. Its website offers no clues as to who runs the group or which political stances it favors, and messages to the email it listed with the federal government when registering as a PAC bounce back as undeliverable.