In their politics and their presentation, North Carolina Rep. Erin Paré and first-time candidate Winn Decker are worlds apart.
She’s a Republican, he’s a Democrat. She’s a small business owner and a military wife; he’s a policy wonk. She has a picture-perfect nuclear family; he’s still saving up to buy his first home. She’ll sling mud and bicker with constituents on social media; he’s pretty quiet online. In short, they represent different archetypes of southern Wake County, where they’re squaring off in one of the most competitive legislative elections this year.
And yet, some of the messaging from the two candidates for state House District 37 has been strikingly similar. They both say they care about affordability and public education. Neither is foregrounding their party affiliation, because it’s not clear who that would benefit. The district is about 45% unaffiliated, 30% Republican, and 24% Democratic.
Republicans have consistently drawn the District 37 boundaries to favor Paré, a three-term incumbent who took office in 2021. But the Democrats have a structural advantage this year: their ringer, popular former Gov. Roy Cooper, is on the ballot in the U.S. Senate race; President Trump’s favorability is at an all-time low; and midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power, a trend that extends to down-ballot races. District 37 covers Fuquay-Varina and part of Holly Springs, two towns that used to reliably vote for Republicans—up until they both elected Democratic mayors in 2025. Out-of-state transplants, lured by new biotech jobs and relatively affordable home prices, are changing the towns’ demographic and political mix. The conservative John Locke Foundation rates the race a true toss-up.
Against this backdrop, Decker and Paré are waging a campaign on two fronts: the economic and the cultural. Paré is touting her record of funding infrastructure improvements and pushing for tax breaks; Decker says she’s letting down teachers, taxpayers, and Duke Energy ratepayers. Paré is also attacking Decker for his support of LGBTQ+ people and causes, calling him “radical” and “too woke.” He’s brushed off those criticisms as a distraction.
‘Do you feel like you’ve been represented down in Raleigh?’
Paré, 47, is a small business owner and former lobbyist. She and her husband Wayne, who is also her legislative assistant, own a Play It Again Sports franchise in Holly Springs, where they live. She’s been involved in her community for a long time, serving as a PTA president at her kids’ public school and founding the Holly Strings Youth Orchestra.
Since taking office, Paré steadily gained power and popularity within the Republican legislative caucus. She now sits on the influential Rules and House Appropriations committees and chairs the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reduction and Reform.
Paré has helped secure tens of millions of state funding dollars for southern Wake County, including for road improvements, expanded drinking water capacity, and a new, bigger DMV office in Fuquay-Varina. She’s an enthusiastic advocate for private school vouchers, and for the proposed constitutional amendment to cap property taxes. This year, she pushed to raise starting teacher pay in the state budget; the final version brought it up from $41,000 to $48,000.
Paré also sponsored or supported bills to ban transgender students from competing on women’s sports teams, require local law enforcement compliance with federal immigration agents, expand the state auditor’s powers, and a bill that required schools to post online catalogs of all the books in their libraries and defined gender as male or female.
Paré declined multiple interview requests from the INDY but agreed to answer questions in writing.
“I will continue to lower costs through responsible budgeting, tax reform, and meeting the state’s needs in funding for infrastructure, healthcare and public safety,” she wrote.
Earlier this year, Meredith College political science professor David McLennan told the INDY that Republicans see Paré as an “up-and-comer” in the caucus who could someday lead a major committee or even “be second-in-command to [House Speaker] Destin Hall.”
McLennan said Republicans would want to make sure she gets reelected, both because she could have a future in leadership and as a point of pride, since she’s one of two remaining Republicans in Wake County’s 20-member legislative delegation. (In northern Wake County, Republican Rep. Mike Schietzelt is also defending his seat in a close race.)
Decker, 34, is an education policy consultant who’s worked for the Hunt Institute and the Common App and now runs his own consulting firm advising educational institutions and nonprofits. He has lived in Wake County for 12 years and Fuquay-Varina for one, a fact Paré has pointed out in several social media posts. Since arriving, he’s gotten to know the town by coaching youth basketball and working remotely from local coffee shops.
Decker says he is running to increase funding for public schools, lower residents’ everyday costs, including utility rates and taxes, and work across the aisle to solve the challenges associated with southern Wake County’s rapid growth. He supports an independent redistricting process to reverse North Carolina’s endemic gerrymandering. He’s pitching himself to Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters who are fed up with the party in power, which was more than a year late to pass a budget and, he feels, are more beholden to corporate interests like Duke Energy than to voters.
“I’ve asked folks to look around: Do they feel like their life is better off than it was six years ago?” Decker told the INDY. “Is their traffic better or worse? … Do you feel like you’ve been represented down in Raleigh? And the answer continues to be no.”
Kitchen table issues
Affordability is Decker and Paré’s favorite buzzword on the campaign trail.
“My husband and I, we’re just like you,” Paré intones in a campaign ad that’s airing on WRAL, WTVD, and WNCN. “We know everything costs more now.” She highlights her support for legislation to cut income taxes, which passed, and repeal local grocery taxes, which hasn’t made it out of committee. She ends the 30-second spot with the words “I’m working to make things cost less,” a sales pitch that echoes Roy Cooper’s ubiquitous “make stuff cost less” slogan.
Asked about the rising cost of living in southern Wake County, Paré wrote that she has a track record of saving residents money and improving their quality of life.
“Traffic would be a lot worse and utility bills would be a lot higher if I had not secured over $70 million in state funding for road improvements and funding to off-set rate increases for water for District 37 residents,” she wrote.
She noted she also sponsored a bill to require electric utilities like Duke Energy to share the cost of fuel with customers. The bill is still in committee.
Decker countered that the people he’s canvassed around the district “don’t feel like things are cheaper.” He alluded to Paré’s support for the Power Bill Reduction Act, which, although it caused Duke Energy to lower its rate increase projections, also removed the 2030 carbon emissions target, shifted up to $87 million in annual energy payments onto residential customers, and allowed Duke Energy to charge consumers up-front for future power plants.
Paré said she supports the law “because it is going to save ratepayers an estimated $15 billion in utility bills.” That amount is supposed to come from performing less carbon emissions regulation of Duke Energy. However, an outside analysis by N.C. State University professors found the law could actually cost ratepayers $23 billion.
Like Paré, Decker wants to bring down residents’ property taxes. He expects the proposed state constitutional amendment to limit local tax levies will pass, and he says how that limit is structured will make all the difference.
He thinks people on a fixed income, veterans, and low-income residents should get a property tax reduction, but people who own multiple homes should pay more taxes on the ones that aren’t their primary residence.
He added that local governments might not need to keep raising taxes if the state would pay its share on public education. The Wake County Public School System ranks 110th out of 115 North Carolina school districts for per-pupil state funding, forcing Wake County to spend an outsize share of its budget on schools each year instead of other needs.
On social media, Paré has repeatedly stated that Decker doesn’t pay property taxes in Wake County. Decker balked at the implication that he’s disconnected from residents’ affordability concerns and possibly even cheating the system. He’s a renter, he explained.
“I wish I was paying property taxes! I want to pay property taxes,” he said exasperatedly. “I am like so many folks in Wake County that are trying to buy their first home. I am representing so many folks that are living that, and so the bullcrap about not paying property taxes is ridiculous. Not to [mention] that I pay it on my car and I pay it through rent and other things.”
Culture war politics
In a move straight out of the national Republican playbook, Paré has filled her social media feed with posts about Decker’s support for the LGBTQ+ community in the leadup to Election Day. He is endorsed by the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which works to elect “pro-equality, pro-choice, out LGBTQ+ candidates at all levels of government.”
“As a transgender rights activist, [Decker] supports biological men competing in women’s sports,” one of Paré’s posts reads. Another calls him “Woke, not Wake.” Decker shrugged off the attacks and said that from what he can tell, voters don’t really care about culture war issues.
“The fearmongering only works so much,” he said. “That’s part of why we’ve been knocking doors, because when people meet me, they realize that those are just attack labels. I think people are frustrated and tired of that type of politics.”
In July, Paré ignited an online firestorm when she posted about a trans teacher at a Wake County elementary school, calling her “a transgender biological male, who dresses as a woman,” and proposing that the General Assembly pass a bill requiring “gender-appropriate professional attire” for public school teachers. Fox News, Breitbart and Newsmax all picked up the story.
By the time she responded to the INDY’s questions in October, Paré had backed off from the issue, acknowledging that “most school districts in NC already have a dress code to prevent distraction in the learning environment; NC school districts should enforce their dress codes.”
Decker said he wants to protect the teacher’s dignity and privacy, then quickly pivoted to what he feels are the real issues.
“When I talk to people, … they’re asking me about affordability. They’re asking me about how we make sure they’re safe from school shooters.” he said.
One day before the start of early voting, Paré posted a photo on Facebook of rainbow campaign signs reading “Winn Decker for trans rights” on a grassy median somewhere in the district. In the caption, she called Decker “radical and wrong.”
Decker’s campaign manager, former Wake County school board member Lindsay Mahaffey, told the INDY she doesn’t know where the signs came from but suspects they are a stunt meant to distract voters.
Despite her attacks on Decker, Paré has tried to flip the script and characterize him as the aggressive campaigner. On Facebook, she called his campaign “more dishonest and nasty than anything I’ve ever been a part of.” But when the INDY asked her to explain what she meant and cite specific examples, she didn’t name any.
“I stand by that statement,” she wrote. “Decker and his team have engaged in a nasty and dishonest campaign at the polls, on social media, and in advertising, and it’s too bad this is what state level elections have become.”
Mahaffey said Paré’s comments are unfounded.
“I cannot think off the top of my head of when we’ve said her name in the general election,” she said. “This is a citizen-focused, voter-focused, issues-focused campaign.”
A couple of Decker’s digital ads do mention Paré’s name: one calls her a “typical politician” and another features the Republican former school board member Bill Fletcher, who says he can “never support [Paré] again.” None of his campaign messaging has verged into personal or misleading territory the way Paré’s has.
“I’ve always stood up to bullies in my life,” Decker said. “A lot of people [who] want me to respond, they want a fighter. … I am that fighter, I just do it in different ways. She doesn’t get to determine the conversations. My job is not to respond to her. My job is to talk about what folks in our district want, and that is how we’re using our social media to engage with folks.”
Early indicators in a “true tossup” district
On Monday morning, Paré posted a two-minute, selfie-style video from the Hilltop Needmore Town Clubhouse early voting site in Fuquay-Varina imploring her supporters to vote.
“I don’t know how this is going to end up, but it’s going to be one direction or another, and I would like to stay on the direction of common sense and results, and that’s what I’m doing,” she said. “So please, please come and vote. It is crucially important that you vote. It’s quick and easy.”
Early indicators point to an advantage for Decker. As of Monday evening, almost three times as many Democrats as Republicans had voted early in Wake County. Turnout was up significantly from the 2022 midterm election. In District 37, 20,672 people had already voted, the most of any Wake County legislative district.
But Paré has a record of exceeding electoral expectations. The same data analysts who rated this election a toss-up predicted she would win by three points in 2024; instead, she won by six.
Paré and her supporters have sunk a lot of money into this race. As of this week, the North Carolina House Republican Campaign Committee has spent $690,000 on television ads for her, plus another $21,000 to $25,000 on Google ads. (Google publishes a cost range for the ads it runs rather than the exact amount.) The Decker campaign has spent a comparatively paltry $46,400 to $53,466 on Google and Meta ads and is not running any TV ads.
Paré is also out-fundraising Decker according to the candidates’ most recent reports. However, she notably has fewer donors contributing to her campaign. In the second fiscal quarter of 2026, the most recent period for which the candidates have submitted financial reports, Paré received about $157,100 from 84 donors averaging $1,870 per donation. Decker received about $125,200 from 929 donors in the same time period, averaging $134 per donation.
Decker said his campaign has canvassed 30,000 households out of an estimated 37,000 in the district. If someone doesn’t answer the door, he or a volunteer will leave them a handwritten postcard instead. He expressed cautious optimism about his chances.
“People are so tired of politics as it is, particularly during this Trump era,” he said. “We are trying to lay out a new vision for leadership and for politics.”
Comment on this story at [email protected].
