NC GOP House Speaker Tim Moore’s adviser confirms he’ll run for Congress
It’s official: North Carolina Republican House Speaker Tim Moore will run for Congress.
Moore has said several times in the past few weeks that he is getting ready to make a final decision on announcing a run, and the legislature he helps run finalized electoral maps last week that give him a favorable district. On Thursday evening, a close adviser confirmed the timing to The News & Observer.
The National Review reported that Moore told other Republicans this week about his plans to run.
“I can confirm that he has started making calls to members of the delegation as well as key supporters letting them know he plans to make a formal announcement next week,” said Paul Shumaker, a political adviser to Moore and a longtime Republican consultant to others, including U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis and former Sen. Richard Burr.
“I wanted you to know I am running for US Congress,” said one text to a donor, obtained by McClatchy. “I am trying to raise money to kick the campaign off.”
Moore has said previously that he won’t run for another House term in 2024, but will finish out his current term, including as speaker.
He seemed to be lining up Republican talking points ahead of his run, with a visit to Texas at the border with Mexico, and announcing he’s endorsing former President Donald Trump in recent weeks.
Moore has led the Republican House on GOP priorities like Second Amendment gun rights, tightening abortion restrictions, reinstating voter ID and reducing the income tax rate for North Carolinians and corporations.
But his only opponent, so far, Rep. Pat Harrigan, a Republican, wouldn’t let GOP primary voters forget a recent scandal involving Moore, as well as his support for some expansions of gambling.
“Let’s be clear: Tim Moore carries a legacy of corruption, from being bought and paid for by the casino and gambling bosses, to taxpayer-funded sexual escapades,” Harrigan wrote on social media. “Such a man does not represent NC14’s values, nor does he deserve its trust.”
Moore was sued over a relationship
Moore, a Kings Mountain attorney, was the subject of a lawsuit this summer over the breakup of a marriage. Moore, who is divorced, was sued under the state’s alienation of affection law over what he described as an “on again, off again” affair with Jamie Liles Lassiter while she was married to local Republican elected official Scott Lassiter. The lawsuit was resolved within weeks. Scott Lassiter is running in a newly drawn southern Wake County state Senate seat.
Moore vehemently denied Scott Lassiter’s other allegations in the lawsuit of trading political favors for sexual favors. And through her lawyer, Liles Lassiter said in a statement at the time that the lawsuit was “outrageous and defamatory.”
Moore and Berger, longtime GOP state leaders
Moore’s counterpart in the Senate, Republican Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, said in October he’ll run for another term in 2024 to his Senate seat representing Rockingham County.
Berger and Moore have led the Republican-controlled legislature together for more than a decade. Their power has coalesced in several new laws, including policy in the state budget passed this fall that gives more power to a committee known as Gov Ops, which is led by Berger and Moore, The N&O previously reported. Democrats criticized the move as creating “secret police.” Other laws, one contested in court this week, take appointment power from the governor and give them to the legislature.
Republicans have a three-fifths supermajority in the General Assembly, meaning they have total control and can override vetoes from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. And they have done just that 19 times this year to create new state laws about abortion restrictions and gun permits, among others.
Shifting districts
Moore is the longest-serving House speaker in state history, and is in his 11th term representing Cleveland and Rutherford counties. This isn’t the first time he looked for a new job: he was rumored to be seeking a UNC system chancellorship at one point, and came very close to running for Congress before.
He considered a run for Congress in 2022 but stopped short of announcing after then-incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn switched districts to challenge Moore.
Harrigan made sure to quote a line from Cawthorn’s own news release about that challenge, saying that the district does not need “a go-along-to-get-along Republican.”
Cawthorn later switched back, and then was ousted in the GOP primary by now U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards.
Edwards’ Western North Carolina congressional district remains similar in the new maps, and a new one currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson of Charlotte was redrawn, apparently for Moore to run: the 14th. Jackson is running for attorney general.
