A State Senate Primary Pits a Folk Hero Against a First-Term Force

Thirty seconds after DeDreana Freeman parks in the empty lot outside St. Joseph AME Church in Durham, a man in a sedan rolls up and waves her down, complaining that she hasn’t returned his calls.

Freeman walks over and says hi. She knows him—he facilitates a volunteer crime prevention group, and Freeman worked with him during her tenure on Durham City Council. The two chat for a bit, then Freeman says she’ll text him to follow up.

The moment crisply animates what Freeman, now running for state senate, is known for: community ties deep enough to get stopped in parking lots, and a way of operating that prioritizes what’s happening in front of her over the phone in her pocket, sometimes at the cost of clockwork. 

She’d be the first to tell you this. Inside St. Joseph, where I’m interviewing her before a candidate forum, she mentions that she often runs late because she likes to “keep the flow of conversation going,” even when she’s got somewhere to be.

“That’s when you get to the real issues,” she says, sliding off her sneakers and swapping them for a pair of beige heels she’s pulled from her bag.

Freeman’s grassroots credibility and nonconformist bent are central to her pitch in the Democratic primary for North Carolina Senate District 22, which covers most of Durham County. It’s a solidly blue seat where the March primary effectively decides the election—and where, this year, Freeman and her opponent, first-term incumbent Sophia Chitlik, share similarly progressive values on most fronts.

But it’s not clear whether Freeman’s record as a community stalwart will be enough to unseat Chitlik, who, while newer to the area—and to local politics—than Freeman, has cultivated her own relationships and goodwill as a freshman senator.

A relatively unknown entity in Durham before she primaried then-state Sen. Mike Woodard in 2024, Chitlik personally responded to more than 500 constituent calls and over 1,400 constituent emails last year, per a report she released in December. She met with over 100 policy advocates. And she put that relationship-building to practical use: When Tropical Storm Chantal flooded parts of North Durham in July, Chitlik was able to promptly connect relief workers with people in affected neighborhoods because she knew and had built trust with community leaders there, the head of a local relief organization told me. 

Freeman, meanwhile, says she has something Chitlik doesn’t: an equity lens forged by lived experience. A Black mother of three, and herself the oldest of 10 children raised by a single mother in subsidized housing, Freeman says she understands what her constituents are going through because she’s been there: stretching SNAP benefits, juggling childcare while pursuing her master’s degree as a first-gen college graduate. It’s a perspective she says Chitlik, an angel investor whose family members have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to support her campaigns, can’t match.

Freeman also points to her longer record of elected service as a distinguishing factor: eight years on city council to Chitlik’s 13 months in the state Senate. 

But Freeman enters the race with a few bumpy years behind her. She’s lost her last two local races—her 2023 mayoral bid, in which she placed third, and her council reelection bid last November, which she lost by a narrow margin. This March, many of the same voters who declined to reelect her to council will be casting ballots again.

Then there’s the incident that’s followed her: three years ago, Freeman was caught on tape cursing out a fellow council member before, by some accounts, taking a swing at him and hitting two other members in the process. 

Freeman denies hitting or swinging at anyone and calls the allegations a product of misogynoir—the form of racism directed at Black women that casts strong emotion as aggression. Still, she’s aware of how it’s shaped her image. 

Before heading into the forum at St. Joseph, she smooths her blazer and takes a breath.

“Time to go be bubbly,” she says.

If the narrative dogging Freeman is one of poor conduct, the one trailing Chitlik is that she skipped the line; that she landed her seat without the years of local government service that typically precede a run for state office.

But Chitlik, 36, has been working in and around politics for years, she says. She didn’t have a lifelong plan to become a politician, she tells me, though she was interested in politics from a young age; growing up in Burbank, California, she became a SAG-AFTRA member at 6 and volunteered for John Kerry and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns as a teen. By the time she moved to Durham in 2017, her résumé included a political appointment in the Obama administration’s Department of Labor and an executive role at an education nonprofit. Since being in Durham, she’s focused on investing in startups run by and for women and non-binary people.

Chitlik says she spent her career as a “behind-the-scenes operator” focused more on political fundraising and philanthropy until she encountered a problem she couldn’t solve without running for office herself: While trying to help a local midwife launch a network of North Carolina birth centers, she hit roadblocks  that reflected a male-dominated legislature that wasn’t prioritizing maternal health, childcare, or reproductive justice. She didn’t think her then-state senator, Woodard, was fighting hard enough against the Republican majority—so she filed to run. 

If you look at my record, you see the ways in which I’ve been fighting relentlessly for working families

nc Sen. sophia chitlik

On the 2024 campaign trail, Chitlik laid into Woodard for crossing the aisle to overturn three of then-Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes and for taking corporate PAC money, something she’s refused to do.

Chitlik’s own fundraising, though, became part of what created the perception that she circumvented the typical path to office: ahead of the 2024 primary, she and family members contributed over $60,000 to her campaign, and she drew tens of thousands more from a network of out-of-state donors that included billionaires. Less than half of her funding during that campaign came from North Carolina donors who weren’t  her family members. 

Campaign finance data from the current cycle was not yet complete at press time, though between the 2024 primary and June 2025, Chitlik and her family have contributed an additional $34,000 to her campaign.

Asked if her financial position distances her from some of the people she represents, Chitlik told me, “We don’t get to choose our circumstances in life,” adding that there are structural barriers that limit who can serve and that she wants to be part of trying to remove them, including by introducing bills on campaign finance reform.

“If you look at my record, you see the ways in which I’ve been fighting relentlessly for working families,” she said.

That’s the case she’s making to voters this time around: she’s been doing the work, and she has the receipts to prove it.

As forecast during her first run, Chitlik, who has a 3-year-old son, has made childcare a focus in the legislature: she’s co-authored a childcare omnibus bill, passed an amendment on childcare facility regulation that made it into law, and introduced bills to establish paid family leave, require allergy training at childcare centers, and mandate lifeguards at day camps.

Beyond that niche, Chitlik has sponsored dozens of other pieces of legislation, including bills to seal eviction records, expand protections for pregnant workers, and secure funding for Durham’s Pauli Murray Center and Stagville Memorial Project. She’s also co-sponsored several bills on housing, some of which follow what’s sometimes called the “Abundance” approach to housing policy and would override local zoning authority in order to allow denser housing types like accessory dwelling units and duplexes. At the other end of the housing policy spectrum, Chitlik has also co-sponsored a bill that would restore local authority to downzone, a power Republicans stripped last year.

Chitlik has made good on her promise to regularly push back against Republicans, voting against them nearly 40 percent of the time. She says that doesn’t mean she’s shut the door on collaboration. She’s worked on bipartisan initiatives, including a bill to create a task force on psychedelic medicine for veterans’ treatment, and even had some Republican colleagues over for her Passover seder last year.

Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Democrat who represents a neighboring district, told me Chitlik met one-on-one with nearly every legislator before last year’s session began.

“When you start your relationship with somebody just sitting across the table talking about your kids or your family, it’s a much different thing than your first exposure being a disagreement in committee,” Grafstein said.

One of Freeman’s first votes as a city council member was a lone dissent.

In January 2018, a month after she was sworn in, the council was tasked with appointing someone to fill the at-large seat that Steve Schewel had left vacant upon being elected mayor. After an initial split between appointing Javiera Caballero and Pilar Rocha-Goldberg, several members switched their votes to Caballero in the second round. Freeman didn’t budge, sticking with Rocha-Goldberg.

It set the tone for her tenure. Freeman wasn’t going to vote a certain way just for the sake of unity optics or political convenience. She thought Rocha-Goldberg was a better candidate; she voted as such. 

In coming years, Freeman would be the sole vote against a widely popular affordable housing bond, saying the amount—$95 million—fell far short of what was needed, and the sole vote against a $10,000 pay raise for council members, which she said she would prefer to be coordinated with raises for county and school board officials. 

She would also regularly push back on development proposals she believed would harm longtime residents. On development proposals the council split on, Freeman often found herself in the 4-3 minority, at odds with colleagues who prioritized adding housing supply—a divide that echoes, at the state level, in debates over bills like the ones Chitlik has co-sponsored to override local zoning decisions in favor of increased density.

On the whole, Freeman was the council member aggrieved constituents could count on to take up their cause, whether that meant pushing to remove rubber tire mulch from a park or backing city firefighters seeking redress for missed pay. 

Taking the side of activists so reliably, even in losing battles, built Freeman a base that treats her like a folk hero. After she was voted out in the fall, supporters piled flowers on the council’s dais to celebrate how she had voted “with the people” in efforts to “stop the sellout of the city to for-profit developers,” per an event flyer.

James Chavis, the man who waved Freeman down in the parking lot, would agree with this characterization.

When I called him to ask whether she really doesn’t return calls, he said she does eventually get back to him. Then he launched into a monologue about how some politicians “plagiarize” the work of community organizers. Freeman doesn’t do that, he said. She’s the real thing.

A native of the Bronx, Freeman, 48, moved to Durham’s Golden Belt neighborhood in the mid-2000s. Soon after, she embarked on a years-long effort to get Golden Belt designated as a historic district—in part to protect residents from being displaced by the Durham Rescue Mission, which was planning a campus expansion. She went on to become president of Durham’s Inter-Neighborhood Council, then joined the planning commission before running for city council in 2017, when she unseated a 16-year incumbent. She currently works as a consultant for nonprofits and government agencies. Previously, she held roles at Clean Energy Durham and the East Durham Children’s Initiative.

Woodard, the former state senator Chitlik unseated, made the exact jump Freeman is trying to make from Durham City Council to the Senate District 22 seat in 2013. He said the transition can be jolting: You’re suddenly one of 50 senators instead of six council members, many of your colleagues are Republicans, and even the Democratic caucus is far more ideologically diverse than what you’re accustomed to in Durham.

“If you want to go over there and be effective,” Woodard said, “that political game is very, very different.”

Freeman will need allies to accomplish what she tells me is her main goal if elected: securing more resources for Durham. Her state senate platform closely resembles her city council platform, down to the acronym—“S.E.E. Justice,” for social, economic, and environmental justice—and lays out an ambitious vision that includes raising wages and holding polluters accountable.

Freeman isn’t worried about finding common ground in Raleigh. She told me she spent years collaborating with people of wildly different political stripes in the National League of Cities, a nonpartisan organization that lobbies Congress on behalf of some 19,000 municipalities.

“I’ve not had any issues around advocating for the things I believe in, and having conversations with people who have completely different stances, and coming into some agreements,” she said.

Most state senators put that kind of diplomacy toward writing bills. But Freeman says she doesn’t actually plan to author much legislation. Instead, she wants to focus on the budget, making sure Durham, with its large tax base, gets its fair share back from Raleigh.

“I’m not trying to fix laws,” she said. “I’m trying to change the system so that it actually works for more people.”

Asked generally about this approach, Woodard cautioned against treating legislation and appropriations as separate tracks. When the legislature passes a budget, he said, there’s the money bill—the line-by-line spreadsheet—but also a policy document that runs hundreds of pages.

“It’s both and,” he said. “You got to pass laws, and you got to get appropriations.”

Sometimes, there isn’t a budget at all. The General Assembly still hasn’t passed one for the current fiscal year—a symptom of the gridlock that makes the Durham council’s 4-3 votes seem tame.

Several issues have shaped the discourse around Chitlik’s first year and reelection bid that, while not directly related to state policy, some voters see as out of step with her progressive positioning.

During Israel’s recent yearslong military campaign in Gaza, which many experts have deemed a genocide, Chitlik was not openly critical of the Israeli government and never publicly called for a ceasefire. Some of the criticism of Chitlik on this issue has veered into antisemitic conspiracy territory: She’s Jewish, lived and worked in Israel for a time, and has access to wealth, a combination that has invited ugly insinuations.

But the simple fact that she didn’t speak up amid Israel’s decimation of Gaza matters to a chunk of local progressives who felt it was a moral imperative to do so. It’s also a contrast with Freeman, who voted with four other Durham City Council members to pass a ceasefire resolution in 2024.

In an email Chitlik told me that she has “always been in favor of the release of all hostages and a permanent ceasefire that affords safety and dignity to all people in the region.”

“My faith inspires me to work toward justice—which is what I’ve been striving to do in the General Assembly on the issues that we can impact, including access to maternal health care, childcare, and quality public education,” Chitlik wrote.

Voters have also raised questions about a legal case involving Chitlik’s husband’s company, American Efficient, an energy efficiency aggregator. American Efficient is facing nearly $1 billion in combined penalties and alleged profit disgorgement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, for alleged fraud. In response, the company has denied the allegations and made a legal challenge to FERC’s authority that, if successful, could further the Trump administration’s broader effort to weaken independent regulatory agencies. The case, which dates back to 2021, remains ongoing.

Asked if there is a conflict of interest between her role as lawmaker and the FERC case, Chitlik wrote in an email that American Efficient is not regulated by the legislature or the North Carolina Utilities Commission and that “federal investigations, including those conducted by FERC, are not influenced by state legislators.”

Floyd McKissick Jr., a former state senator who serves on the state Utilities Commission, echoed that assessment, telling me FERC is “completely independent” and that Chitlik would have “no influence whatsoever” over the proceedings. 

For some voters, the 2023 audio recording of Freeman shouting at then-Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton, and the question of what happened next, has calcified into shorthand for who she is.

During her unsuccessful bid for mayor that year, small signs reading “She’ll FIGHT for Durham” appeared staked into the ground beneath her official campaign signs around town. Whether they were meant as a dig or a compliment, the allusion seemed clear. (Freeman, for her part, didn’t take them as an insult: “I mean, it’s true. I would fight for my community,” she said.)

The incident between Freeman and Middleton took place after a council work session; not many people were present. That afternoon, WRAL captured audio of Freeman shouting profanities at Middleton, and several weeks later, the INDY broke the story of the alleged physical altercation based on accounts from three anonymous sources. Freeman declined to comment for that story but now tells the INDY she didn’t swing at or strike anyone and that she was arguing with Middleton verbally when Mayor Leonardo Williams, then a council member, physically intervened. Freeman’s response was to push his hands off her, she said.

Williams, one of the people Freeman allegedly struck, declined to comment for this story, as with previous coverage. Former Durham Mayor Elaine O’Neal, the other person Freeman allegedly struck, could not be reached for comment but previously told Bull City Public Investigators that she did not see Freeman “physically assault anybody,” including herself. 

Middleton, who has not previously gone on the record about the incident, told me in an email that Freeman “absolutely swung around” Williams “in an attempt to strike me.”

“It is a cartoonish-level insult to our intelligence to suggest that [Williams] just happened upon two colleagues arguing and thought it would be a good idea to ‘physically intervene’ and chose his female colleague to restrain,” Middleton wrote. “[Williams] intervened PRECISELY because Councilmember Freeman was advancing towards me with her finger in my chest threatening to ‘F me up.’ I retreated until I was in a corner.”

Even setting aside the allegations of violence, the recording of Freeman’s profanity-laced outburst has prompted questions about her temperament.

Freeman said the argument with Middleton was an outlier and maintains that her anger—spurred by a proposed resolution to censure an ally on council, Monique Holsey-Hyman, over allegations that had not yet been investigated—was justified.

In his email to me, Middleton rejected what he called the “canard” that the council acted improperly against Holsey-Hyman. The same letter from the district attorney that ultimately cleared Holsey-Hyman, he noted, also found no evidence of a coordinated effort against her by council members.

“I have no ill will towards [Freeman] and wish her nothing but the best,” Middleton wrote. “However, she knows full well what transpired in that hallway and I will not allow my integrity to be sacrificed on the altar of anyone’s political ambition. My Momma taught me to use my words and to keep my hands to myself.”

As the primary looms, both candidates are doing the work of connecting with voters face-to-face.

Chitlik has been co-hosting town halls with neighboring state Sen. Natalie Murdock, walking constituents through the mechanics of the legislature.

The town halls aren’t explicitly campaign events but can function as such. After one  in mid-January wrapped up at the Garrett Farms clubhouse, audience member Andrew Silver told me, voice thick with awe, “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard so much information coming at me at such rapid fire.” That morning, he’d looked at his sample ballot and figured he would probably vote for Freeman, whom he’d liked on council.

“I think I’ll stick with Chitlik after tonight,” he said.

Freeman, meanwhile, is working the circuit of community forums and mixers that have long been her milieu. At a recent Committee on the Affairs of Black People event (which Chitlik also attended), I caught Special Dover, a social work student at North Carolina Central University, after she chatted with Freeman for the first time.

“She’s an amazing person, from the little conversation that we had,” Dover said, specifically praising Freeman’s “focus on unity.”

Of course, there’s a cap on how many people you can reach in person. 

One of the starkest differences between the two candidates, both in office and on the campaign trail, is their use of digital media. Chitlik posts regularly on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky, sharing everything from inclement weather updates to straight-to-camera explainer videos and snapshots of parenthood. Recently, she’s been particularly vocal on immigration; when federal immigration agents came to the Triangle in November, she shared community safety resources while patrolling neighborhoods alongside local organizers,  and after the January murder of Renee Good, she appeared on local TV news opposite NCGOP communications director Matt Mercer to call ICE “an agent of fascism” while Mercer defended the shooting as self-defense.

Ryan Wang, former president of Durham’s chapter of the statewide Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party, said other electeds would do well to model Chitlik’s communication style.

“What Democrats are really struggling with, at the local level, is leveraging tools such as the media and social media to bring awareness to the damages that the Republicans are doing in our state,” Wang said.

Freeman has a more limited media presence. She rarely talks to the press, and while she’ll toss up the occasional Instagram story when she’s out and about, she generally views broadcasting her service as performative and unnecessary.

Coming out of the last election cycle, there was this deflation, that maybe the voice of the people is not heard. That makes it more important that I do it this way again.

nc senate candidate dedreana freeman

Andrea Muffin Hudson, a local bail fund organizer, appreciates this attribute. 

“She’s one of those people who are out there, actually in the community, doing the work, but she doesn’t have her phone out to take pictures,” Hudson said.

A downside to this approach: It can make it harder for the average voter to know that Freeman is running for office. I spoke with several voters who said they admired Freeman’s work on city council but had no idea she’d mounted a state Senate bid.

It can also make it harder for voters to know what she’s doing day to day. Citing Chitlik’s anti-ICE social media posts, I asked Freeman if she’s been engaged with immigration advocacy work recently. She bristled.

“I’ve been doing this work around ICE since 2011, when I first met the families who were being ripped apart by our immigration failures,” she said. “I don’t need to post. I am doing the work in the streets.”

Freeman’s history of community work is what secured her an endorsement from the fledgling political action committee Durham Black PAC, according to Jessica Murrell-Berryman, a member of the group.

Other endorsements have been harder for Freeman to come by. Chitlik has secured support from groups like Planned Parenthood, the Sunrise Movement, and the AFL-CIO—and even the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People’s PAC, which backed Freeman in her council reelection bid in the fall.

McKissick Jr., who chairs the Committee, said members “respected” Freeman’s interest in the seat but ultimately felt Chitlik was the stronger choice.

“I don’t think they felt [Freeman] was ready,” McKissick said, “or somebody who would perhaps be the voice that could really get things done at this critical time.” 

Without a glut of endorsements, the other lever a candidate can pull is fundraising. In her recent council run, Freeman’s opponent outraised her by more than three to one. Is she doing anything differently this time on that front, I wonder?  

She is not. If she’s running to represent working people, she says, she can’t do it by playing the big-money game.

“Coming out of the last election cycle, there was this deflation, that maybe the voice of the people is not heard,” Freeman said. “That makes it more important that I do it this way again.”

Comment on this story at [email protected].

Disclaimer: Chitlik’s father-in-law, Adam Abram, is chair of the board of directors for The Assembly, which owns INDY.