If you’re traveling to Raleigh from Wake Forest, driving down Capital Boulevard—part of U.S. Highway 1, which stretches north from Key West to the Canadian border—is still your best route. Wake County commuters will encounter plenty of traffic but, so far, no tolls.
State Rep. Mike Schietzelt takes credit for that.
In North Carolina House District 35, an expansive district shaped like a telephone handset that covers most of Northern Wake County, what to do about that busy stretch of highway connecting the capital city and Wake County’s northernmost town embodies the issues of affordability and aging infrastructure that are on many district voters’ minds this election cycle. The battleground district has flipped from blue to red over the years and could be poised to flip again.
Defending his seat, the one-term incumbent Schietzelt, 40, is a litigation attorney, Marine veteran, and father of four. Running against Schietzelt for the second time is Evonne Hopkins, 50, a family law attorney, small-business owner, and mother of two.
In 2023, Republicans in the General Assembly redrew the district to their advantage. Democrat Terence Everitt, who represented the district beginning in 2020, mounted a successful bid for the state Senate in 2024. Hopkins ran against Schietzelt for the open House seat that year, in a district that was considered R+3, and lost by 1,820 votes out of a total 55,842 ballots cast. That defeat hasn’t deterred her.
“I’ve been campaigning since the end of ’23,” Hopkins told the INDY in a recent interview. “I didn’t stop.”
In Schietzelt’s nearly two years in office, the district has experienced one blue wave and is now considered a true toss-up district. In last year’s municipal election, Democratic town commissioner Ben Clapsaddle defeated Wake Forest’s longtime incumbent mayor Vivian Jones, taking 71% of the vote. (While officially unaffiliated, Jones was considered conservative.) Two more Democrats won seats on the town’s board of commissioners. Wake Forest has grown by more than 300% since the year 2000, and was recently named one of the top suburbs in the country where people are moving.
Hopkins said she thinks she has momentum on her side this year. Her campaign has knocked on 25,000 doors in the district as of the first week of early voting.
“The folks in [this] district are extremely receptive to our messaging, to this race; the support has been unbelievable, and I think it’s a very favorable year,” she said. “I am extremely optimistic that we will get across the finish line this time.”
Schietzelt declined a request for an interview, did not respond to a follow-up request, and did not respond to a series of emailed statements and questions about his legislative record.
Schietzelt grew up in Burlington, attended UNC-Greensboro as an undergraduate, and served in the U.S. Marine Corps before graduating from Duke University School of Law.
After working as a judicial intern for North Carolina Supreme Court Justice (now Chief Justice) Paul Newby in 2017, Schietzelt clerked for then-North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin during the 2018–2019 term. He worked as a legal fellow at the John Locke Foundation beginning in 2019 and was a Constitutional Law fellow at Regent University School of Law under Martin, then the law school’s dean, from 2020 to 2022.
In 2020, as Martin was helping to write lawsuits to challenge the presidential election results in key states, Schietzelt made social media posts defending Martin and amplifying stolen election lies.
“This whole election reeks of illegitimacy,” he wrote on Twitter (now X) at the time.
While at Regent, Schietzelt submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the petitioners in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case to overturn Roe v. Wade and co-authored a paper comparing the Dobbs decision to Lord of the Rings.
Since 2022, Schietzelt has worked at the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich LLP. On his campaign website, he takes a moderate posture, focusing on the economy, education, public safety, and infrastructure, and highlights his work fighting a state Department of Transportation plan to place tolls on U.S. Route 1 as part of planned upgrades to the highway.
“I successfully blocked plans to toll Capital Boulevard, ending a multi-year discussion and ensuring the improvement project moves forward without putting a new financial burden on Northern Wake County families, commuters, and businesses,” Schietzelt wrote.
He also notes his support of Senate Bill 266, the Power Bill Reduction Act, which he writes “caused Duke Energy to lower significantly its projection of energy-bill increases in its most recent resource plan.” He says he worked across the aisle on a bill to give teachers a 22% pay raise in the House budget and boost starting pay to $50,000 (in the final budget, teachers received an 8% raise and starting pay of $48,000, up from $41,000). And he touts his sponsorship of a bill that requires oversight for any new regulations that would cost taxpayers more than $20 million.
Hopkins moved to House District 35 in 2005. She has a bachelor’s degree from Rollins College in Florida and a JD and MBA from the University of San Francisco. A board-certified family law specialist, Hopkins owns the Raleigh Law Center, where she works on what she describes as high-conflict custody cases, dividing up marital assets and advocating for children.
Hopkins said she was “called to serve” in 2023 “because I was very unhappy with how the General Assembly was leading our state.” She said she wants North Carolina to be a state that benefits not just “those who are more established in their careers, who already own a home, [are] already established in their job and maybe have already made money investments.
“I want to provide a North Carolina that helps everyone and builds our youth up,” she said.
Hopkins cites education, healthcare, and infrastructure as her biggest priorities for the district.
She said state lawmakers have placed a stranglehold on taxpayers’ education dollars and defunded public education via Opportunity Scholarships, or vouchers that families can apply for to subsidize tuition at private schools. North Carolina has spent more than $1.6 billion on vouchers since the program was implemented in 2013, including more than $580 million during the 2025–2026 academic year. Nearly three-quarters of all private school students in North Carolina now receive taxpayer-funded vouchers, according to state data; tuition at private schools across the state has also increased following the expansion of voucher programs.
“That’s a system that’s just not working,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins said as a lawmaker, she would advocate to pay teachers more and direct state funds to benefit more students and educators, easing the burden on local governments like Wake County that have to take on new debt and raise property taxes in order to find money in their already-squeezed budgets to support schools.
“When we prioritize public education, we’re prioritizing our youth and giving them opportunities and ways to advance in our society,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins also said she wants to support local efforts to bring a hospital to Wake Forest. The state has twice denied UNC Health’s applications for a Certificate of Need for a community hospital and emergency room facility in a two-year span.
Infrastructure, too, is an issue in the district that needs addressing, Hopkins said.
“I’ve watched the growth. It’s just exponential,” she said. “When we had these big storms [earlier this month] and we had all this flooding … we’re not paying attention to these extreme weather events and the impact on our community. We’re not being proactive about it.”
Hopkins said Schietzelt’s legislative record doesn’t help district residents who are struggling with the cost of living. She pointed to several examples.
Schietzelt’s vote for Senate Bill 266, in particular, she said, was a vote to raise residents’ energy rates. Along with eliminating the state’s requirement to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030, the bill shifts up to $87 million in annual energy payments from commercial and industrial customers to residential customers and allows Duke Energy to charge consumers up front for future power plants, including those used to power data centers. Then, this spring, Duke Energy asked for North Carolina residents to cover $800 million in fuel and power overages.
Following public outcry, Schietzelt in April sponsored HB 1192, which would shift energy costs away from ratepayers to large users. But the bill hasn’t advanced from the legislature’s Committee on Energy and Public Utilities.
“The optics, like, the idea that you can … pass a bill and raise rates and then turn around and … sponsor a bill to lower rates, that’s just showmanship,” Hopkins said. “That’s not what we need. And that’s not what this district wants. The district wants real deliverables. Don’t do one thing and say something else.”
She also criticized Schietzelt for his actions on Opportunity Scholarships. He has said publicly that, while he supports school vouchers, he wants to keep them focused on working-class families seeking education options that better suit their students’ needs.
“Expanding the program risks turning it into a subsidy, which will only raise the costs of private education and defeat the purpose of the program,” Schietzelt wrote in a 2024 candidate questionnaire from The News & Observer.
But when he had the chance to limit Opportunity Scholarships, Schietzelt didn’t take it. Although present in May 2025, he did not vote on an amendment to an appropriations bill on the floor that would have restored family income limits, capped annual tuition fee increases at participating schools at 5%, and added other requirements. And on another amendment to the same bill that would have reduced state funding for vouchers and redirected money to public schools for disability services, meals, and devices, Schietzelt voted to table the amendment, effectively blocking it.
“When he had an opportunity to actually vote on that, he failed to deliver,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins said failing to deliver for constituents looks to be a theme in her opponent’s legislative record.
Schietzelt sponsored a bill to restore downzoning powers to the towns of Wake Forest and Rolesville after the legislature restricted local governments’ authority over zoning in 2023. The bill is stalled in a legislative committee. In a campaign ad, Schietzelt says he is working to eliminate the grocery tax; he sponsored a bill to repeal the 2% local grocery tax, but it also has gone nowhere.
“[Republicans] have control of the General Assembly,” Hopkins said. “If [bringing down grocery costs] was a real goal, why is it not happening? Again, I think it’s just for optics. ‘I can say I sponsored it.’ Yeah, but you have control of the General Assembly. Your party does. Why aren’t you getting this stuff done? Especially when you vote with your party 100% of the time?”
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