Ken McCool

Ken McCool is a small business leader from Matthews running to flip a seat in the North Carolina House this November. Ken serves on his local town council, where he has helped increase affordable housing and bring economic opportunities to his community. 

Ken is running against a vulnerable Republican incumbent who helped enact a highly regressive abortion ban and won her 2024 race by a margin of less than half a percent. A victory for Ken will be an important step for building Democratic power in North Carolina and a win for working families across the state.

North Carolina is one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country, which has allowed an increasingly out-of-touch Republican legislative majority to cling to power for decades, even as Democrats have won elections statewide. 

In the 2024 elections, Democrats pulled off a major victory by breaking the GOP supermajority in the state House, giving them the power to protect newly-elected Governor Josh Stein’s veto authority. Now, 2026 presents a historic opportunity to gain ground and end the GOP’s gerrymandered supermajorities in both chambers for good.

Democrats in the North Carolina Senate are just one seat away from breaking the GOP supermajority in their chamber, and Democratic candidates in the House are running to put a Republican supermajority even further out of reach. With competitive races for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House alongside these legislative races,  the DLCC is all hands on deck to help fund the strong campaigns and infrastructure needed to reach voters and win seats in both chambers in November.