ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — Vice President J.D. Vance slammed Democratic Rep. Don Davis for his voting record during his Rocky Mount event on Friday.
Vance criticized Davis for voting with Democrats against what Vance said were North Carolinians’ best interests.
“Don Davis is not a man who stands for the people of this state or this district,” Vance told an audience of about 200 attendees at a venue in the same complex as Davis’ district office.
Davis holds what is probably the most competitive congressional seat in North Carolina, after the latest round of redistricting enacted by Republican state lawmakers last October made the 1st Congressional District even more advantageous for their party.
Both parties are targeting the seat, which may prove crucial to control of the House. The GOP currently holds a slim 218-214 majority with three vacancies.
Trump-backed candidate Laurie Buckhout, an Army veteran, won the GOP nomination for the district in last week’s primary election. She’s challenging Davis for a second time after losing to him in 2024.
Buckhout called out Davis for voting against the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, which she touted for dedicating $50 billion nationwide to a rural health transformation program that she says could have helped his constituents. She said it’s time for eastern North Carolina to hold him accountable for his actions.
“Those of us who have been held accountable, expect it,” she said.
Davis has received backlash from his own party for straying from party lines at times and voting with the GOP. But Vance pointed out that Davis sided with his party against legislation requiring voters to prove their U.S. citizenship.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last month, mandating people show documents like their passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers to vote.
It’s now in the U.S. Senate, and the Florida state legislature passed its version of the bill on Thursday.
Mentions of the SAVE Act stood out to some attendees at the event.
“Everybody wants a fair and free election,” Phyllis Abernethy, vice chair of the Edgecombe County GOP, told NC Newsline.
But more than 21 million Americans don’t have documents providing their citizenship readily available, according to research from the Brennan Center, and roughly half of Americans don’t have a passport.
In addition to its location in the 1st Congressional District, Rocky Mount is essentially in Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper’s backyard. It’s about 12 miles away from where the former governor grew up in Nashville.
North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat is pivotal to control over the upper chamber. Democrats see it as one of their best pick-up opportunities in 2026, aiming to narrow or overtake the Republicans’ 53-47 majority.
GOP voters selected Michael Whatley, former Republican National Committee chair, to take on Cooper.
Whatley, who served as chair of the North Carolina GOP before moving to the party’s national branch, traveled aboard Air Force Two with Vance to Rocky Mount.
“Roy Cooper is one of these people who clearly cares way more about other countries than he does the United States of America,” Vance said.
The vice president condemned Cooper for protecting immigrants and siding with Ukraine in its war against Russia.
However, there was “one Ukrainian Roy Cooper didn’t care about,” Vance claimed.
He invoked the death of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte who was fatally stabbed on the city’s Blue Line transit system last summer, just as President Donald Trump did during his Rocky Mount visit last December.
Vance repeated already-debunked claims that Cooper had facilitated the release of Zarutska’s alleged killer DeCarlos Brown, and that Brown was in the country illegally. Neither of those claims are valid.
“Why does he care so much about the war in Ukraine, 6000 miles away, but doesn’t give a damn about an innocent Ukrainian girl who lost her life in our backyard? Because he won’t do his job,” Vance said.
Whatley called Cooper the most “soft on crime” governor in state history.
He alleged Cooper would advocate for cities like San Francisco and New York while leaving behind the rural farmers and manufacturers of his own state.
“We’ve got to remember that North Carolina’s economy is built on farming, and we are right here in the heart of tobacco country, and we know that we’ve got to do more for that,” Whatley said.
Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said Trump and Vance have broken the promises they made to voters during their campaign, from avoiding wars to bringing down the cost of living.
“J.D. Vance is trying to sell the American people on the Trump-Vance agenda, but voters aren’t falling for his bullsh*t,” Martin said. “As prices soar and jobs disappear, Vance knows that he and Trump have betrayed the American people, including their own supporters, and no amount of spin will change that.”
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