The field for one of North Carolina’s most closely watched congressional races grew again this week with the entry of Dr. Richard Hudspeth, a physician with deep ties to the region who says his experience caring for mountain families gives him a unique perspective on what Chuck Edwards has failed to deliver.
“We’ve seen this disastrous dismantling of health care infrastructure, erosion of trust in medical information and really draconian cuts to critical research that, for me, threatens future medical advances, and I just can’t sit idly by while we destroy what we built,” Hudspeth told The Smoky Mountain News Sept. 12. “I’m running for Congress to defeat Chuck Edwards because he voted to cut billions from our rural health care system, and in the meantime, as far as I can tell, he’s done nothing to make it easier for the hard-working families that I serve to put food on their table, pay for medicines, to put a roof over their head.”
Hudspeth, who served as chief executive officer of UNC Blue Ridge Health until last year, is widely known in professional and community circles. Born and raised largely in Chicago, Hudspeth moved to North Carolina in the early 1980s. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill medical school, Hudspeth traces the roots of his medical career to a unique source.
“One of the things that I ended up doing was serving at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Destitute and the Dying in Kolkata,” he said. “I remember vividly, even to this day, that I saw a young man who really wasn’t older than myself at the time die needlessly from tuberculosis simply because of poverty and lack of access to health care. Seeing how his life could have been spared with just a few dollars more, that’s when I decided, truly, that I wanted to be a doctor and dedicate my life to service, a life of helping those who are left out and left behind.”
Hudspeth’s candidacy comes amid rapid shifts in the race for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. Earlier this summer, the Democratic field was jolted by controversy over the annual Democratic gala, when questions over candidate participation prompted the resignation of the party chair and the reworking of the lineup.
Not long after, Moe Davis, a former congressional candidate and one of the better-known names in the district, dropped out, leaving more room for candidates Jamie Ager, Zelda Briarwood, Paul Maddox and now Hudspeth. Chris Harjes, who entered the field last spring, is still in — sort of. Harjes told The Smoky Mountain News Sept. 12 that while he wouldn’t file as a candidate in December, he would continue his campaign by “picking on Chuck and his puppeteers online” and is encouraging supporters to donate to state Rep. Lindsey Prather (D-Buncombe), Democratic Senate candidate and former governor Roy Cooper and North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Anita Earls.
Edwards, meanwhile, has not yet drawn a Primary Election opponent, although he may. His 2024 Primary opponent, Christian Reagan, said on Facebook after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10 that he was considering another bid. Reagan garnered an astonishing 31% of the vote against Edwards despite raising just $38,000 and told SMN Sept. 12 it was “hard to stay on the sidelines” after witnessing such a horrific spectacle.
Outside observers are also beginning to take note of the 2026 race. The Cook Political Report, which had long rated NC-11 as solidly Republican, recently shifted its forecast to “likely Republican,” signaling that national Democrats could see the district as competitive.
The Cook Report story, which came out shortly before Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper broke the news of Hudspeth’s FEC filing, mentioned that Republican incumbent Rep. Chuck Edwards “could face a serious challenge from Democrat Jamie Ager, a meat farmer who comes from a political family” and that the 11th District “is one of the few regions of the country that trended left between 2020 and 2024, bucking the national rightward trend.”
The shift reflects not only the perceived strength of Democratic recruitment but also the mounting vulnerabilities of Edwards.
The Republican Party apparatus in the district has hardly been a model of stability. Internal fractures, resignations and questions of leadership have all plagued the GOP’s local infrastructure at the very moment Democrats are presenting new faces and new messages. Hudspeth, with his medical background and emphasis on service, will test whether Democrats can capitalize on the moment to mount their most serious challenge to Edwards yet.
Among the main issues for voters to consider is the impact of federal cuts to Medicaid and Medicare in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that Edwards supported in Congress.
“That bill that passed will do really almost irreparable harm to rural health care in North Carolina,” Hudspeth said. “It will potentially destroy and likely destroy our Medicaid expansion. I think I bring that health care expertise to try and get to Congress in order to save Medicaid, but also Medicare.”
But even before Edwards’ vote — and before the effects of the BBB become apparent in 2026 — health care affordability had long been a problem. Hudspeth is calling for a public-private nonprofit partnership to ameliorate at least some of the sting.
“When I was at the community health center, under my leadership, we were able to quadruple the number of clinical sites where people could receive care. We quadrupled the number of patients with access to care. We were able to quadruple the number of providers who are now serving in our rural clinics in Western North Carolina, and we were able to quadruple our workforce to nearly over 700 employees and we did that all without an increase in our federal health center grant,” he said. “To me, that’s a model that we can use to get affordable care for people across Western North Carolina.”
But health care cuts aren’t the only impending problem for working families contained in the BBB; it also reauthorized President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were heavily slanted towards the wealthy.
“Chuck Edwards voted to add trillions of dollars to our debt, to give tax breaks to the rich and take money essentially out of our pocket by reducing our ability to access healthcare without any real noticeable impact on our ability to put food on the table,” Hudspeth said. “I think that he has failed us in so many ways.”
Asked what he believes is Edwards’ greatest failure, Hudspeth echoed voices that have been steadily growing louder since earlier this year.
“He is a member of the powerful appropriations committee, and he really isn’t using that for the people that he represents,” Hudspeth said. “When we think about, for example, the Hurricane Helene response from the federal government, he has not been able to bring the necessary resources to Western North Carolina in order to help us after this traumatic and dramatic natural disaster.”
Against an estimated $60 billion in damage statewide, the $110 billion bill Edwards said he authored will only bring an estimated $9-15 billion to the state.
On housing affordability, Hudspeth said the federal government can and should help address the region’s housing crisis by supporting “forever affordable housing” through creative financing rather than simply handing money to developers. Drawing on his experience expanding community health centers through public–private nonprofit partnerships, he argued that federal dollars could serve as seed money loaned to local organizations, allowing them to build long-term mortgage models that keep housing permanently affordable.
Hudspeth frames his many of his views through the sharp lens of a physician, saying gun violence should be treated like medical issues are.
“I think any needless loss of life is tragic,” he said of Kirk’s murder and of crime in general, including the recent killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte. “First, our country needs to recognize it for the public health emergency that it is and then treat it as such. And to treat it as such means to understand it, invest in curing it and move forward as a culture to alter this epidemic of violence that we have.”
On that same note, he described environmental stewardship — specifically, the lack of congressional funding for the region’s National Parks and National Forests — as a generational duty tied to clean air, clean water and protected spaces essential for human health.
Cherokee sovereignty and cannabis, two issues Edwards has threatened the tribe over, are also a precarious balance of individual liberty and public responsibility. Hudspeth stressed respect for the tribe’s self-determination but weighs that against his concerns about addiction and the need for a comprehensive health system. He said he hadn’t yet formulated a strong position on the rescheduling of Cannabis at the federal level.
That mentality appears similar to his position on abortion, in that decisions must remain between women and their families, while prevention through education and access to birth control can help keep abortion rare.
“Infertility, lack of access to birth control, miscarriages, maternal death, unintended pregnancies, fatal fetal anomalies — I’ve seen it all. And after a lifetime of serving women and their families, I’ve learned that there’s not always one answer,” he said. “There’s not an answer that works for everyone, but there is an answer that works for that woman and her family. I’ve been trained to help and not judge, and I’m going to bring that to Congress and work on finding programs and legislation that can again respect individual rights to make health care decisions for themselves.”
Abroad, Hudspeth said U.S. security depends on supporting Ukraine and rebuilding dismantled aid programs, and on Gaza he urged electing “peacemakers” to address violence worldwide.
Domestically, he pledged support for LGBTQ rights.
“I go back to Mother Teresa. She had a powerful influence on me, and she once said — and these words have stuck with me my whole life — if you spend all your time judging people, you won’t have any time to love them,” he said. “We definitely need to live more of her words in our times right now.”
Hudspeth said education is central to his campaign, shaped in part by his wife’s career as a second-grade teacher. He said every child deserves access to a high-quality education and that the federal government is failing to uphold that promise, pointing to underpaid teachers, overcrowded classrooms and inadequate resources as evidence of neglect.
“Just like public health — every dollar that goes into public education is an investment in our future,” he said. “I don’t believe we are investing wisely in that future.”
Citing decades-old attempts by Republicans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, Hudspeth answered in what has also been a recurring theme of his — that it’s easier to destroy than it is to build.
“If they’re not happy with the way things are going, what are they doing to replace that? The federal government does have a good bit of funds involved in public education already. Just to destroy things without really learning how to create a more effective program, if you object to its effectiveness, is honestly a bit of cowardice and thoughtlessness,” he said.
Democrats can win NC-11, he said, by appealing to unaffiliated voters with “common sense” solutions, but getting those solutions in front of voters who now have several choices before them takes big money. How does Hudspeth plan to raise it?
“We’re going to find out,” he said. “It’s all-hands-on-deck. I’m not a billionaire. I’m not personally able to finance my own campaign, and even if I could, I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. This is going to require a campaign that resonates with individuals and voters in our district, and everyone is going to have to contribute, and we’ll see how that goes.”