Davis was born in Snow Hill, a small town on the coastal plains of North Carolina. Growing up, he spent Sundays worshipping at the local Presbyterian church and summers working in the surrounding tobacco fields. At 29, he was elected Snow Hill’s youngest-ever mayor. He went on to represent the town of about 1,500 in the state legislature and then in Congress. The Democrat is now running for a third term, but in a very different district: If he wins, his constituents will no longer include his wife, his kids, or anyone else in Snow Hill.

Davis is used to having to figure out exactly who can vote for him. The first time he was elected to Congress, in 2022, he triumphed in a district that slightly favored Democrats. The North Carolina legislature redrew it to favor Republicans, and Davis won reelection in 2024 by less than two percentage points.

Then, in the summer of 2025, President Trump called for the GOP to gerrymander as many seats as it could to protect the party’s House majority, even though redistricting is typically done only once a decade, after a census. Democrats in some states retaliated with their own gerrymanders. North Carolina was one of seven states, both red and blue, to hastily redraw its maps after Trump’s demand; four more redistricted after the Supreme Court’s April decision gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Many of the incumbents being targeted for defeat by Republicans are Black Democrats. Davis, who had his home and base of support in surrounding Greene County cut out of his district, is one of them. But the gambit may not succeed as planned.

Republicans are forecast to gain fewer than half of the seats they expected when they redrew the maps, in large part because voters are mad—over inflation, over corruption, over the Iran war. Here in North Carolina’s First Congressional District, many have an additional cause for anger: their gerrymandered map. The state, which is among the most politically divided in America, already has district lines that give Republicans a significant edge.

The congressional delegation includes just four Democrats out of 14 representatives. The GOP-dominated legislature wants to cut that to three, and has drawn lines tailored to end Davis’s congressional career. If the new boundaries of his district had existed in 2024, Trump would have won the area by almost 12 points. (He carried the old district by just three.) The new map removed four counties with large Black populations and added six Republican-leaning ones near the state’s coast.

Under the new map, the proportion of Black voters in the First District dropped from about 40 percent to about 32 percent. After the redistricting, the Cook Political Report labeled Davis “the most vulnerable House Democrat in the country.”He seemed like a goner. But recent polls show a close race, with both parties spending eye-popping amounts of money—more than $52.9 million in total, making it the most expensive House general election on record, according to the data-tracking firm AdImpact.

Democrats have represented North Carolina’s First District since 1899, but Davis has been touting his centrist voting record in Congress. He often reminds voters that he has spent nearly all of his life in eastern North Carolina. “These are tobacco-cropping hands,” he told me, holding up his palms. (Federal law requires congressional candidates to live in the state, not the district, in which they are seeking office.) Davis is running against Republican Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army colonel whom he narrowly beat in 2024.

Buckhout is now trying to capitalize on the more deeply red composition of the district. “We are Republican-majority districts,” she told a crowd at a rally with President Trump and a Republican candidate in a nearby district last week. “That’s simple math. There are more of us. All you got to do is get out the vote.”After she left the stage, Trump turned to her: “You’re running against Don Davis? I hear he’s a total disaster.”It’s unclear if Trump’s support will help her.

His popularity has cratered in the state; a recent poll from Elon University shows that only 34 percent of North Carolinians approve of the job he’s doing, despite the fact that he won 51 percent of the vote in 2024. Ben Lindemann was among the North Carolinians who voted for him. But the 49-year-old told me he will likely vote for Davis this year, in part because of the way Trump has governed. “I just don’t like the way he’s ruining our country,” Lindemann said.

In the past, Davis could count on votes from Greene County, where he ministers at the church he grew up attending. Now he needs to win over unaffiliated voters who may have never voted for a Democrat before in areas where he is less well-known. Billboards with his face line the highway: Don Davis supports lowering costs. Thank you Representative Davis, for supporting our veterans. There’s no mention of the Democratic Party; Davis, an Air Force veteran, is running as a brand unto himself.

He often cites the times he’s crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans, including to end last year’s government shutdown, to fund ICE, and to condemn “socialism in all its forms.”In 2024, the website GovTrack, which assesses politicians’ voting records, ranked Davis the most conservative Democrat in the House.

The district is among the most rural and agricultural in the state; seemingly endless fields of sweet potatoes and cotton line the sides of country roads. Davis was one of only 14 Democrats who voted in favor of this year’s Republican-sponsored Farm Bill, arguing that it would provide necessary support for the district’s economy. Farmers—particularly those who cultivate row crops such as tobacco and cotton—have been squeezed by tariffs and soaring operating costs. Thomas Joyner, a sweet-potato farmer, told me Davis is the only Democrat he’s ever voted for, because he “genuinely wants to help agriculture.”

Richard Anderson, a 63-year-old who grows tobacco, told me Trump’s trade war with China destroyed the crop’s profitability by leaving a glut of product. He said he’ll be voting for Davis, even though he voted for Trump in 2024 and identifies as an independent. “I think that his district is proof that people will cross the aisle,” Anderson said.

The gerrymander has given voters another reason to back Davis. People are angry about the redrawn lines, especially Black voters who feel the redistricting targeted them. Early votes cast by Black voters in North Carolina as of Wednesday were up 57 percent compared with the same date in 2022, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida. Voting-rights advocates have said that a backlash against redistricting is driving a surge of African American turnout across the South.

At the “Unapologetically Blue” banquet thrown by the Nash County Democratic Party earlier this month, more than 400 people showed up—the most in the event’s history, according to organizers. As I wandered among the crowd, attendees kept bringing up the unfairness of redistricting. “We fought hard for our rights. All of us did,” said 69-year-old Ernestine H. Stephenson, who is Black. Cynthia Pitchford told me that she grew up in the 1970s cropping tobacco; there were, she said, few other job options available for Black people in eastern North Carolina.

Decades later, when Pitchford heard Davis was running for Congress, one of the first things she liked was their shared country background. This year, she decided to volunteer for him because she was so upset about the GOP’s gerrymandering. “I knew it was a ploy to try to pull votes away from him,” she said.

I heard the same at the homecoming game of Elizabeth City State University, a historically Black university, where Davis walked the stands of the school’s football stadium in a driving rain, shaking hands with fans. He told me that people bring up redistricting all the time. “I believe the general feeling is that no one’s really asked for this,” Davis said. “I mean, people feel that they’re left out.”

Buckhout lost to Davis in 2024 by only about 6,000 votes, and has since worked in a senior cyber-policy role in the Pentagon. She did not respond to my request for an interview, but when I talked with her supporters around the district, many said they believed she would fight socialism, which they said represents an existential threat to the country. Others applauded her military background and sense of patriotism. Buckhout spent decades in the Army and commanded an 800-person battalion in Iraq.

“She’s strong and truthful,” said Rhonda Flood, a 61-year-old who has been volunteering for Buckhout’s campaign. Flood said the people she’s met while canvassing “know she’ll fight for the country, because she has.”

Buckhout faces the same problem as many other Republicans this cycle—if your message is that the country is on the right track, how do you motivate voters who are unhappy with the state of the nation to show up? Early-voting numbers indicate that, so far, Republican turnout in North Carolina is lagging. Buckhout’s answer has been to campaign hard on fears about socialism and transgender issues. At the rally with Trump, she referenced ongoing unrest in France, warning that similar chaos could come to America if voters stop choosing Republicans. “I have fought against those people, and this is no joke,” she said to cheers. (When I asked the Buckhout campaign whom she meant by “those people,” the answer was “violent extremists.”)

Buckhout has reminded voters that Davis in 2023 sponsored the Equality Act, which, if it had passed, would have banned discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. She also criticizes him for being the only member of the House to vote “present,” rather than yay or nay, on a 2025 bill that would have effectively banned trans student athletes from playing in federally funded girls’ school sports. (Davis said the issue should be left up to states, not the federal government.)

Several Republicans I spoke with said they are voting for Buckhout because of her opposition to transgender athletes. (Davis has said he supports North Carolina’s ban on transgender athletes.) In 2025, Davis was one of only three Democrats who supported former Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors.

When I asked Davis if he still supported the Equality Act, he said his support had “evolved.”Davis opposed last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act—which Buckhout has touted on the campaign trail for its tax cuts and other help for working families. But as I traveled North Carolina, voters told me that the cost of living is surging at a relentless pace, and they were seeing little relief.

The district once seemed an easy flip for Republicans. But in a year when the price of gas has spiked, tariffs are squeezing businesses, and some undecided voters are still trying to get to know the candidates, a redistricting plan that appeared to be a sure thing could backfire. If it does, Davis said he will leave Snow Hill and find a house within the district’s new lines.