Erin Paré, the Republican representative for North Carolina’s 37th House district, usually comes across as mild-mannered on social media. But in November, as Democrats in southern Wake County celebrated historic wins in the 2025 municipal elections, she lashed out.
Democratic challengers had just ousted Republican incumbent mayors in Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs—previously considered Republican strongholds—by wide margins. As party strategists took a victory lap on TV, Paré, one of two Republicans in Wake County’s 13-member delegation in the state House, penned a bristly clapback to a pundit’s botched pronunciation of “Fuquay-Varina.”
“Typical liberal elite downtown Raleigh swamp creature,” Paré posted on X. “Act like they care about the suburbs during elections, then as they turn and run they can’t even pronounce the town’s name they claim to have conquered.”
Paré has represented District 37, which covers Fuquay-Varina and most of Holly Springs, for a little over five years. This legislative session, she’s sponsored or supported bills to ban transgender schoolkids from competing on women’s sports teams, remove Planned Parenthood from Medicaid coverage, require local law enforcement compliance with federal immigration agents, expand the state auditor’s powers, require schools to post online catalogs of all the books in their libraries, and define gender as male or female without any acknowledgment of transgender or nonbinary identities. She’s also signed her name to some less-controversial bills related to raising teacher pay and preventing child abuse. A small minority of the bills she’s sponsored have been bipartisan.
Pronunciation faux pas aside, Democrats carved an undeniable foothold in southern Wake last fall, and it’s an open question whether Paré’s right-wing politics will still resonate with voters in her fast-growing, increasingly diverse and educated district in 2026.
Paré’s Republican colleagues have redrawn District 37’s lines twice since she was first elected in 2020, but it remains competitive, and she’s only ever won by about 3,000 votes or a handful of percentage points. This year, it won’t help that the Republican-controlled state House and Senate still haven’t managed to pass a budget due last July, or that Americans are unprecedentedly unhappy with the Trump administration and, by association, Republicans downballot. The Civitas Partisan Index, created by the conservative John Locke Foundation, classifies District 37 as R+0, a true toss-up—down from R+3 in 2024.
Whether Paré gets a fourth term depends, in part, on the quality of her Democratic challenger. There are three candidates running in the primary: an education policy wonk, a constitutional law wonk, and an IT consultant. All are newcomers to local politics, but in interviews over the last month, each told the INDY they have what it takes to beat Paré.
At a patio table outside Cultivate Coffee Roasters in Fuquay-Varina, Marcus Gadson sipped a double shot of espresso and told me how an elementary school history project helped set the course of his professional life.
Gadson, 38, was raised in a mostly-white Indiana town by parents born into Jim Crow segregation. In the fifth grade, his teacher assigned the class to report on, and dress up as, a historical figure. Everyone on the teacher’s list was white, but Gadson’s parents wanted him to learn about someone who looked like him. They suggested he study Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer and first Black Supreme Court justice.
“My parents made me go to the library and learn all this information,” Gadson recalled. “[Marshall] … had a mischievous streak. When he was about my age, he had to copy the Constitution as a punishment. And so then as an adult, he really knew that Constitution backwards and forwards. That piqued my antenna of thinking about becoming a lawyer: seeing the difference he made, but also seeing how good he had to be.”
After college at Dartmouth, Gadson taught high school in Arkansas with Teach for America and attended Harvard Law School. He clerked for an appellate court judge in Tennessee, practiced at a big law firm in Washington, D.C., then moved to North Carolina to join Campbell University’s law school faculty. He now teaches at the UNC School of Law. Last year, he published a book about state constitutions and constitutional crises.
“One of my dreams is that I want Americans to appreciate their state constitutions as much as they do our federal Constitution and understand the role that [they play] in their lives,” Gadson said.
North Carolina’s constitution includes a literacy test, added in the aftermath of the 1898 white supremacist massacre in Wilmington. The clause is no longer enforced, but it hasn’t been removed.
“That’s a problem, because if I’m a Black North Carolinian, that raises a profound question: Why should I respect a state constitution that still has a literacy test in it?” Gadson said. “I don’t have a good answer to give my two little Black boys … except that … in the General Assembly, I’m going to try to take it out.”
Gadson wants to make life more affordable for North Carolinians by enacting an earned income tax credit, a child care tax credit, and a tax deduction for rent. And he wants to make it easier to build homes in North Carolina—an idea he thinks could get bipartisan traction.
As a public school parent, Gadson is focused on education policy. He wants to raise teachers’ salaries across the board, increase the focus on civics education in public schools, and provide more mental health resources for students.
“My son has had a rotating cast of substitute teachers for his first year in pre-K,” Gadson said. “To me, that was an emergency. The legislature has not treated it as such, but they did treat redistricting as an emergency.”
The biggest focus of Gadson’s campaign is protecting little-d democracy. He wants to create an independent redistricting commission to redraw North Carolina’s aggressively gerrymandered congressional map. He proposes screening state Supreme Court candidates through an independent nominating commission to reduce the influence of money and partisan politics on the state’s highest court. For Gadson, political and judicial reforms are essential first steps to improving everyday North Carolinians’ quality of life.
“If you don’t have a realistic plan to bolster our democracy, then you only have a theoretical plan to help on cost of living,” he said. “Whatever I propose for cost of living isn’t going to have long-lasting legs if we don’t have politicians with the right incentives in place.”
Over black coffee from Esteamed in Cary, Ralph Clements, 59, pondered the road not taken. After graduating from Raleigh’s Broughton High School, he very nearly joined the United States Marine Band as a clarinetist. In college, he dreamed of becoming an engineer and building space stations. He took eight years to graduate from North Carolina State University because he was simultaneously working as a computer scientist and for the National Guard.
“People think they’re going to their goal, but if they really look back, their path wiggles,” Clements said. “No one ever goes in a straight line.”
Clements eventually made a career as a health care IT consultant in Atlanta. He returned to the Triangle in 2020 to be closer to aging parents and now lives just outside Fuquay-Varina.
Clements decided to run in District 37 because he wanted to do more than knock doors or make phone calls for the local Democratic Party. The more he learned about Paré, the more he became convinced he could mount a serious challenge against her.
“I’ve seen her campaign and her qualifications she lists, and I have more experience and those same categories than she does,” Clements said, citing her roles as a franchise business owner and church and community volunteer.
But as we talked, Clements seemed to waver on whether he actually wants to be elected.
“I’m not trying to start a new career,” he said. “My next move professionally is to figure out ‘When I can afford to retire? Let’s go to Provence and tour the wineries.’ But I’m a patriot. My state needs me. I can do this. I can do it well. It would be personally inconvenient and probably painful. … I’ll have to bite my hand to keep from speaking out in some of those committee meetings where they drag in the wrong direction for hours.”
Clements emphasized that he wanted to flip District 37 and break the Republican supermajority in the house—Democrats already did this in 2024, but his point about chipping away at Republicans’ viselike grip on legislative power stands.
“They don’t lead, because all they have to offer is chaos,” Clements said. “We need to return to normal operations.”
Like Gadson, Clements wants to reinvest in North Carolina’s public schools and restore public trust in the legislature by passing a budget and establishing an independent redistricting commission. He also named affordability and planning for growth as campaign priorities.
Winn Decker had already drained his coffee mug by the time I met him at the Mill café in Fuquay-Varina at our agreed-upon time.
Decker, 33, grew up in rural Tennessee in a town of about 500. He was valedictorian of the small public high school where his mom taught chemistry and his dad taught business and coached football. As an undergrad on a basketball scholarship at Rhodes College, he thought he might become a chemist, until a tedious job at a drinking water lab disabused him of that idea.
As Decker recounted this part of his life, he briefly digressed into talk of haloacetic acids, chlorines, and water purification. “I can be too much of a nerd, I apologize. You can always tell me to shut up,” he said sheepishly. “Long story short, I realized I was not doing that for the rest of my life.”
Decker decided he was more interested in the public policy questions around water than in the science of treating it. So he ended up in grad school at N.C. State University in 2015, pursuing a master’s in higher education administration, then a Ph.D. in public administration, all while working full-time for N.C. State’s Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life. He also began volunteering with the local Democratic Party.
During the 2016 general election, Decker remembers volunteering as a poll greeter at the Pullen Park voting site near campus and seeing a bunch of N.C. State fraternity brothers show up to cast their ballots.
“I’d sat down with these men and had values-based conversations. I knew we believed similar things,” Decker said. “And I watched them walk up to the polls and take a Republican slate card.”
In that moment, Decker realized: “We’re not losing because we don’t believe in the right things, or because we’re not pushing the right policies, but because we don’t communicate and make people feel heard.”
Decker now lives in Fuquay-Varina, where he’s helped knock doors for Democratic candidates for several years. After completing his degrees, he joined the Hunt Institute as an education policy analyst, then went to work for the Common App on programs related to lowering barriers to higher education.
Unsurprisingly, education is a key plank of Decker’s platform. He supports restoring state funding for teachers’ master’s degree pay supplement, increasing the ratio of social workers and counselors in schools, following the state Supreme Court’s Leandro plan for public school funding, and reinstating the income caps on the controversial Opportunity Scholarship private school voucher program. He also wants to see private schools that receive voucher money publish their test scores and freeze their tuition.
Decker shares Gadson’s and Clements’ interest in ending partisan gerrymandering and bolstering trust in North Carolina’s democratic institutions. But he described himself as a pragmatist who is willing to work across the aisle and has relationships with legislators from both parties.
Decker believes many of his policy ideas, including means-tested property relief for senior residents on fixed incomes, legislating a “right to repair” and updating infrastructure to support southern Wake’s population boom, could garner bipartisan support. But he added he won’t compromise on issues like Medicaid funding and reproductive justice.
“I have ideals and visions that we’re going to fight for, but I also understand how policy and politics work, and so I’m going to navigate carefully,” Decker said.
Of the candidates, Decker had perhaps the most nuanced take on why Paré keeps winning: “Republicans in the legislature have strategically made it so that Democrats are not going to [successfully sponsor] any bills. So to run a bill, someone in Wake County is having to go to Paré. So she gets to put her name on some decent things.”
Decker also granted that Paré is accessible to residents and business owners. He thinks the Democrats could be doing a better job connecting with voters in that way.
“We’ve got to be in community all the time,” he said. “So many people, rightfully so, feel like Democrats show up to ask for a vote. But we’ve got to be there, when we’re in power and when we’re not in power, being good community members and doing the things that we believe in.”
Whoever wins the District 37 primary will face a tough race against Paré in November, said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College.
“Paré is a well-funded candidate and someone that Republicans really want to stay in the legislature,” McLennan said. “On a personal level, they perceive [her] as an up-and-comer. She’s already important in the budget writing process, and they see her as potentially moving up in leadership. People like her in the Republican caucus.”
Paré is currently one of a few chairs of the influential House appropriations committee. McLennan said Republicans see her as someone who could eventually lead a major committee or even “be second-in-command to [House Speaker] Destin Hall.” He added that Republicans want to protect their majority in the legislature and to hold on to their seats in Wake County “for their pride.”
On the other hand, the population growth in southern Wake and the 2025 mayoral elections in Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs signal that Republicans’ dominance of the district could be waning. The timing also gives Democrats a leg up.
“Midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power in Washington,” McLennan said. “We’re talking about a Republican-plus-three district. Even a small-wave election for Democrats could overcome that structural disadvantage.”
As for which of the three newcomer candidates will rise to the top in the Democratic primary, McLennan said factors like Decker coaching a local youth basketball team or Gadson’s kids attending Wake public schools could go a long way.
“That kind of thing may make a difference, because they know more people,” he said. “There’s relatively little time to become well known across the district, so you’re going to have to really push your ground game, get your folks out. Those personal connections are going to make a big difference.”
Each of the candidates said they’re prepared to knock doors, reach out to a wide swath of voters (44% of registered voters in district are unaffiliated) and generally run disciplined campaigns.
Clements is his own campaign manager and hasn’t collected many endorsements.
“I don’t really mind being the outside guy,” he said. What he lacks in institutional support, he said he makes up for his ability to appeal to more moderate voters.
“Being an older guy, I can connect with the life experience of some of those folks,” he said. “I think I can get centrist people to consider voting for a Democrat when they might not have before, because either they’re tired of MAGA extremism, or they want to see that mature business approach that I have.”
Gadson and Decker both have campaign managers and teams of volunteers. Decker also has a field director. In January, he said his team had already spoken with more than 2,000 voters. He said his campaign has set a target number of doors to knock based on their internal “win number”—the number of votes they’ve calculated they need to win in the general election.
Decker also has by far the most local endorsements of the three candidates, including from Holly Springs Mayor Mike Kondratick.
“Winn Decker supports smart infrastructure investments that improve safety, reduce commute times, and strengthen our local economy. His approach balances fiscal responsibility with delivering what Holly Springs needs to continue to grow,” Kondratick wrote in an email to the INDY.
Wake County Commissioner Safiyah Jackson—who challenged Paré in 2024 and lost by 6 points—also endorsed Decker.
“[Decker] launched a campaign that was serious about engaging volunteers and voters,” Jackson wrote in an email to the INDY. “His background in government budgeting, his work on sensible property taxes, and his support of local government control is why he is the strongest contender.”
Decker’s other endorsers include the Wake chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators, the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, County Commissioner Tara Waters, and over a dozen city and town council members from Holly Springs, Apex, Garner, Cary, and Raleigh.
(No elected officials in Fuquay-Varina have endorsed any of the three candidates. Mayor Bill Harris declined a request for comment.)
Gadson, Clements, and Decker each spoke in “when” rather than “if” terms about winning the Democratic primary. But looking ahead to November, they all conceded that Paré is formidable.
“First off, we’re gonna go win a primary,” Decker said. “That is what we’re focused on right now. Once we do that, we consolidate Democratic voices. Primaries are great because they let different ideas and perspectives pop up. But at the end of the day, we also know this race is … about going to beat [Paré].
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