A Triangle-area congressional race has broken primary spending records in North Carolina. As of Friday, Feb. 27, political action committees and super PACs have dropped about $4.2 million in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District.
Durham County commissioner Nida Allam is challenging incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee for the seat Foushee has held for two terms. It’s a rematch of the 2022 contest, which became the most expensive primary in state history. Outside groups contributed over $3.8 million to that race.
While the spending in the 2022 primary leaned heavily in Foushee’s favor with roughly 90% spent on behalf of her campaign, outside money is more evenly split in this year’s rematch.
NC Newsline identified almost $4.2 million in total outside spending reported as of Friday — nearly $2.4 million in support of Foushee, and more than $1.8 million on the side of Allam. That amounts to a 57% to 43% split in spending, with slightly more money spent backing Foushee.
PACs function independently, spending on behalf of candidates they support. They are banned by law from coordinating with candidates’ campaigns.
Many of the expenditures occurred in the past week, and there will likely be more in the final few days before the election on March 3. Early voting in North Carolina runs through Saturday.
The leading spender so far in the race is the Jobs and Democracy PAC, which has put $1.6 million toward ads backing Foushee. The group, led by former Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Brad Carson, positions itself as “supporting Democrats who put people before Big Tech” and describes “sensible AI regulation” as its key issue.
That group is tied to Public First Action, which received $20 million from AI company Anthropic for its regulatory advocacy efforts — a move apparently seeking to provide a counterweight to OpenAI’s own political spending. Critics of Foushee have seized on this, arguing that the donations make her beholden to the AI industry.
“Letting these AI companies write their own regulation is like letting my kids set their own bedtime. We’re going to hold them accountable on March 3!” Allam wrote in a Feb. 20 post on social media.
The second biggest spender, American Priorities, is backing Allam. They’ve spent more than $900,000 in the race after forming on Feb. 12. The PAC is targeting at least a dozen races in 2026 in an effort to oppose pro-Israel groups and candidates, and has ties to supporters of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.
Article One PAC spent the third-most at $600,000 in support of Foushee. This group is named after Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which established the legislative branch and its powers. The PAC says it backs candidates committed to exercising the rights of Congress, as opposed to acting as “a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch,” according to its website.
Supporters of Allam have alleged that Article One is connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pointing to Jane Street Capital co-founder Robert Granieri’s backing of its affiliate, Article One Victory. Granieri has also donated to AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project.
Foushee disavowed the support of AIPAC in August and has not accepted money from the group. That has not stopped Allam from attacking Foushee over the pro-Israel lobby, urging followers on social media on Wednesday to “support our campaign and tell AIPAC they can’t buy elections any longer!”
Foushee has also attacked Allam over outside groups’ support for her, writing in a Feb. 5 social media post that “a billionaire-funded PAC is trying to sway my race” — referring to Leaders We Deserve, a PAC run by youth activist David Hogg that has spent $276,000 in the race.
“When an opponent’s advertisement can’t name a single vote that it would take differently than me, you know I must be doing something right,” Foushee said in a video attached to the post.
Other PACs that have bought airtime in the race on Allam’s behalf include Justice Democrats, Working Families, Unity and Justice, The Impact Fund and NCAAT in Action. For Foushee, there’s also Rolling Sea and Advance North Carolina.
The winner of this primary is likely to win the congressional seat in November, because the district has been gerrymandered to strongly favor Democrats. With the stakes so high, Triangle-area airwaves have been saturated with ads for the past month, and those ads have taken a sharply negative turn as Election Day approaches.
For example, Allam’s campaign sent area TV stations a cease-and-desist letter over an ad paid for by the Foushee campaign that claimed Allam “refused to file a legally required financial disclosure.”
“What is she hiding?” Foushee’s ad asks. Allam’s attorney called it defamatory.
Despite the rancor dominating the race, one rare moment of magnanimity took place Friday morning when Allam praised Foushee for supporting the North Carolina Amazon unionization campaign, writing in a letter to Amazon leadership that she was “proud to join her call” for an open forum for workers.
“Though Representative Valerie Foushee and I are opponents in the upcoming congressional primary on March 3, we are allies in the important cause of cementing our constituents’ fundamental right to organize,” Allam wrote.
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