Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam will challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee in the March Democratic primary. The 4th Congressional District includes all of Durham and Orange counties, as well as northern Chatham and western Wake.
Allam will file Thursday, setting up a rematch between the two biggest contenders in the district’s 2022 Democratic primary, which became the most expensive congressional primary in state history. Foushee won that election by 9 percentage points and did not draw a challenger in 2024 from her own party.
In an exclusive interview with the INDY, Allam said that she is running again because she’s disappointed by Foushee’s record.
“She has been in office for three years,” said Allam. “What has been accomplished?”
In an emailed statement to the INDY after Allam’s announcement, Foushee said, “You can look at my record to show that I am not just paying lip service to our shared progressive values but instead working to advance legislation like the ICE Badge Visibility Act, the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, and the Block the Bombs Act.”
Foushee filed for reelection on December 1, calling her two terms in Congress “one of my life’s greatest honors,” in a press release.
Allam and Foushee align on many policies, like combating climate change and expanding access to Medicare, which are expected stances in the bluest district in North Carolina. While the candidates have sharp disagreements on campaign finance and the war in Gaza, voters may end up looking for differences in vibes and messaging more than actual policy objectives.
Foushee, who won her first local election when Allam was 4 years old, has deep relationships in the district and a longer track record for constituents to judge. Allam, 32, is gambling that voters want generational change and will favor an outspoken and social media-savvy candidate.
Allam contrasted Foushee with David Price, who represented the district for over 20 years (though the district’s boundaries moved several times and Price lost reelection once in the 1990s).
“No matter what, David showed up for this district,” said Allam. “When ICE and CBP are here, kidnapping your neighbors, a tweet or a strongly worded letter is not going to reassure anyone. The way that you can fight back against that—you need organizers in Congress.”
In her Thursday email to the INDY, Foushee said, “I am ensuring the people of NC-04 have a voice in Washington by voting against the National Defense Authorization Act, the Republican Continuing Resolution, and the Big Ugly Bill that prioritized tax breaks for the wealthy over the needs of working families.”
Foushee first won election to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board in 1997 and then worked her way up through Orange County government—including stretches on the county commission, and in the state house and state senate—before running to fill Price’s seat after his retirement. Foushee was the first Black woman to hold several of those roles.
Allam has served on the Durham County Board of Commissioners since 2020 and was the first Muslim woman to hold public office in the state. She worked as political director for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during his 2016 presidential run and was vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party from 2017 to 2021. She is currently the vice chair of the county commission after serving a term as chair.
The 2022 Allam-Foushee matchup was defined by outside money spent to elect Foushee, including over $2 million from pro-Israel groups like American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. In the two years since the current war in Gaza began, local governments have passed resolutions to denounce the war, including in Durham and Carrboro.
Some politicians and activists saw those resolutions as a way to put pressure on Foushee; Carrboro’s resolution urged the local congressional delegation “to join us,” while Durham’s included a clause that the resolution be forwarded to Foushee and then-President Joe Biden. Allam, at the time, penned an op-ed criticizing Foushee’s decision to travel to Israel in March 2024.
Earlier this year, the INDY reported that Foushee said at a Carrboro town hall that she “will not accept” AIPAC money in the 2026 election.
The question for Asher Hildebrand, the former chief of staff to Price and now a professor of public policy at Duke University, is “How much of that sticks to Foushee, if we’re relitigating things that happened four years ago?”
Allam believes the 2022 money, as well as recent donations to Foushee from PACs affiliated with Lockheed Martin, Walmart, and Northrop Grumman, show that the incumbent is a “corporate Democrat,” per a press release from Allam announcing her candidacy. Allam enters the race with an endorsement from Sanders, an indication that she will lean into economic populist messaging in contrast to Foushee.
“Nida is a proven fighter with the courage to take on corporate power, billionaires, and billionaire-funded Super PACS like AIPAC,” Sanders said via Allam’s release.
The shape of the district has also changed a bit since 2022—portions of Alamance, Caswell, Granville, and Person counties have been removed and replaced by a jagged portion of western Wake that stretches from Morrisville to Fuquay-Varina. It also includes the northern portion of Chatham. Hildebrand cautioned against making any assumptions about who those new boundaries may favor.
“In its iteration then and now, even though it has portions of other counties, Durham, as a community, as a population center, is the center of gravity in the district,” Hildebrand said. “So one interesting question might be, what’s changed in Durham?”
One big change Hildebrand noted is that each candidate now likely has higher name recognition than a few years ago—Allam from her years on the county commission and Foushee from her two terms in Congress.
The candidates’ lists of endorsements also give some clues as to their strengths. Foushee’s 50 endorsers are a who’s who of state and local politics, including Gov. Josh Stein, former Gov. Roy Cooper, nearly every state representative and senator in her district, Durham Mayor Leo Williams, and the sheriffs of Chatham, Durham, and Orange counties.
Allam has secured several high-profile out-of-town endorsements, including from activist David Hogg and the leaders of progressive organizations Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, and the Working Families Party.
Democrat Mary Patterson has also filed to run for the seat. She did not appear to have a campaign website and has not yet responded to the INDY’s request for information.
Republican Max Ganorkar has also filed to run. His website calls on residents to “BE AN ANTI-SOCIALISM WARRIOR.” Ganorkar ran unsuccessfully in the 2024 Republican primary for the seat. He is unlikely to gain much traction in a district that, per the Cook Political Report, trends Democratic by more than 20 points and has a core in Durham and Orange counties that voted for Kamala Harris with 75% and 80% of the vote, respectively.
The primary election is on March 3. Early voting starts on February 12.
Update: This story has been updated to include comments from Foushee following Allam’s announcement.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Foushee won the 2022 Democratic primary by six points.