Some people will say a gay woman who’s a Christian minister just can’t get elected in the South.

A year ago, few would have predicted that a crowded field of Republicans would eventually whittle themselves down to two, in a runoff, competing for the U.S. House seat of Asheville Republican Rep. Mark Meadows.

After months and years of litigation, a Wake County court decided Dec. 2 that North Carolina could proceed with the 2020 elections using newly-drawn congressional maps, and that there would be no delay in the sign-up period for the March 3 Primary Election. 

The landscape of the 11th Congressional District is about to change literally and figuratively — a ruling in a gerrymandering lawsuit could result in new maps, and another Democratic candidate has joined the primary election field in hopes of unseating incumbent Asheville Republican Congressman Mark Meadows. 

Asheville Republican Congressman Mark Meadows’ extreme partisanship, attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and hypocritical fiscal responsibility make him a prime target for electoral defeat this year, according to three Western North Carolina Democrats who plan to challenge Meadows for his 11th District seat.

First, though, those candidates will square off against each other in a Democratic Primary Election for the right to face Meadows in November; others may yet come as well –- the filing period for candidates doesn’t end until Feb. 28.

Just one month before candidates start signing up to run for the 2018 elections, a three judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down North Carolina’s congressional districts as partisan gerrymanders that violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Rick Bryson, a current alderman in Bryson City, has his eyes on Washington, D.C., as he plans a run to represent North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District.

In a debate that focused on everything from Iran and health care to equal pay for women and earmarks, Congressional candidates Republican Mark Meadows and Democrat Hayden Rogers pushed back from the similarities that people draw between the two conservatives.

Looking at Mark Meadows today, it is difficult to imagine him as a self-described “fat nerd” wandering the high school halls in Tampa Bay, Fla.

The Republican candidate for the 11th U.S. Congressional District has come a long way during his life — both in his self-made success and actual distance.

Hayden Rogers grew up hunting, fishing and playing the chasing game ‘Fox and the Hound’ in Robbinsville.

Touting himself as the all-around Western North Carolinian, Rogers reminisced about his childhood in rural Graham County, just a short jaunt from his grandparent’s house.