Kathy Manning easily won the March 3 Democratic primary for the newly drawn 6th Congressional District.

Manning finished the evening with 56,665 votes for 48.3 percent, which gave her almost a 30 point lead over Rhonda Foxx, who finished second with 23,304 votes for 19.9 percent.

Former Guilford County Commissioner and perennial candidate Bruce Davis finished third with 17,636 votes for 15 percent.  Derwin Montgomery finished fourth with 14,576 votes for 12.4 percent and Ed Hanes Jr. finished fifth with 5,009 votes for 4.3 percent.

Manning has now made it through what appeared to be the most difficult portion of her run for Congress.

In 2018, Manning ran a well funded campaign in the 13th Congressional District and was defeated by Republican 13th District Congressman Ted Budd.

In 2018, Manning was running in a Republican district that would be extremely difficult for any Democrat to win, and she lost.

But the congressional districts were redrawn for this election and the new 6th District has been drawn to make it extremely difficult for any Republican to win.  The term that is used is that the district “leans Democratic,” but that can be misleading unless people realize that what leans Democratic means in this case is that it is a heavily Democratic district.

In the November general election, Manning will face Lee Haywood who won the Republican primary with 28,712 votes for 73.2 percent over Laura Pichardo who had 10,487 votes for 26.8 percent.  Pichardo doesn’t live in the 6th District, which is legal, but generally voters like to elect people to represent their district that actually live in the district.

It appeared that the most difficult part of the path to Washington for Manning would be winning the Democratic primary with enough votes to avoid a runoff election,  but she did that with 28 percent to spare.

The new 6th Congressional district is made up of all of Guilford County and the southeastern portion of Forsyth County that includes most of Winston-Salem.

 

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