District 31 covers six communities that have very little in common. Suburbs, farmland, food deserts, coal plants. The only reason you're all in the same district? The math works for one party.
Actually, three. None of them are fun.
You live in one of these places. You know your challenges. Click your community and see if your representation matches your reality.
"Project Delta" is a proposed 1,800-acre data center campus near Walnut Cove. The developer promises $20-40 million in annual tax revenue and 250-500 permanent jobs. Your neighbors aren't buying it.
Over 3,600 petition signatures against. 300-400 residents packed the meeting. Your planning board recommended against it. The concerns: noise, water usage, threats to Saura tribal land and Hairston family historic sites, Dan River environmental impact. The land was rezoned from residential and agricultural to heavy manufacturing. No tech company has even been named as the tenant.
Your county commissioners approved it 3-2 in January 2026 anyway.
You'd be better served by a rural-focused district, one that understands agricultural communities, broadband gaps, and healthcare deserts. Instead, you're lumped with suburban Forsyth to pad the margins. Your voice gets diluted, and decisions get made for you, not with you.
Your population is up nearly 49% since 2000. The Northern Beltway is opening new development, but your local roads can't handle it. The I-40/I-74 interchange backs up daily.
NCDOT projects are "in the pipeline," but that doesn't help you get to work today.
Growth decisions are being made at the county and state level by people who don't sit in your traffic. When your senator doesn't face a real challenge, there's no accountability for the infrastructure gaps you deal with every day.
Your city has 21 identified food deserts, concentrated on your side of town. Research from Wake Forest University found that nearly half of Black residents have low or no access to healthy food.
If you live in east-central Winston-Salem, your life expectancy is 67.9 years. On the west side? 84.6 years. That's a 16.7-year gap within the same city. And the patterns trace back to 1930s redlining maps.
You need transit investment, affordable housing, and healthcare access. Those are city issues. But the district lines carved you away from your natural representation and dropped you into a suburban and rural district where those issues don't drive anyone's agenda. The lines moved around you. You didn't move.
The Northern Beltway is bringing an explosion of growth to your community. Growth you didn't ask for. A 94-lot development was recommended by the planning board despite your town manager, a council member, and a packed room opposing it.
Your streets are narrow. Residents measured as little as 19 feet across on some roads near the proposed site. They weren't built for this. The $88 million US 158 widening project won't finish until 2029.
You know your neighbors. You care about the character of your town. When growth decisions get imposed from outside, you lose control of what your community becomes. You deserve a senator who understands that.
Duke Energy's Belews Creek Station was planned to retire by 2035 under the previous resource plan. The 2025 plan pushed that to 2040. Meanwhile, Duke filed an early site permit with the NRC in December 2025 to evaluate six advanced reactor designs on a 1,000-acre site next door. None of them are commercially proven anywhere in the world.
Duke expects the NRC review to take about 18 months. The deadline to request a hearing is April 2026. The first reactor wouldn't operate until 2036 at the earliest. But under the Power Bill Reduction Act (SB 266), Duke can charge you for construction costs before any of it is built.
You live nearest to these facilities. You have the most at stake and the least say. A real election would force candidates to take positions on what happens in your backyard. Without one, these decisions happen in boardrooms and Raleigh, not in your community.
Your state representative, Jeff Zenger, is also a developer. His company bought land in Lewisville for $65,000, proposed a development, and got turned down by both your planning board and your town council. He threatened to sue for $8 million. Your town settled for $1.975 million. That's nearly $2 million of your tax dollars for land appraised at $136,000.
Now he's the primary sponsor of House Bill 765, which would strip your local governments of zoning authority, fast-track developer approvals, and let developers sue individual council members and planning board members who vote against their projects. Clemmons held a special meeting to mobilize against it. Forsyth County mayors called it "Wild West" zoning.
Oh, and when the legislature forced partisan elections on Lewisville, Clemmons, and five other Forsyth towns that never asked for them? Lewisville responded by electing its first-ever Democratic mayor.
You care about what your community looks like. Clemmons and Lewisville have strong schools, real identity, and residents who show up to planning meetings. But the people who represent you in Raleigh are writing laws that take power away from your local officials and hand it to developers. In an R+25 district, there's no pressure on them to stop.
In a real election, candidates have to earn your vote. In an R+25 district, they don't even have to return your calls.
Both parties gerrymander. Both are wrong. But right now in North Carolina, one party draws the map. And they've drawn districts to guarantee outcomes, not represent communities.
Your state senator won without a real challenge. When you don't have to compete, you don't have to care.
Two lists. One for you, one for me.