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'Bathroom Bill' Sponsor Among GOP Hopefuls in NC-9

Dan Bishop answers a question during a debate among republican candidates for the 9th congressional district in Monroe, N.C., Tuesday, May 7, 2019. The primary election is May 14. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

The race for North Carolina's Ninth District congressional seat has drawn a crowded field of Republicans for the Tuesday primary.

State Sen. Dan Bishop of Charlotte, the author of the state's controversial “bathroom bill,” is among the GOP frontrunners for the seat.

In 2016, he sponsored House Bill 2, which directed transgender people to use public bathrooms and showers that matched their birth sex.

The measure grabbed national headlines and prompted boycotts by entertainers, governments and some businesses thinking about moving jobs to North Carolina.

HB2 was partially repealed in 2017 but many conservatives continue to support the original legislation.

The seat appeared to be in GOP hands after Republican Mark Harris barely edged out Democrat Dan McCready in the November campaign. But state officials ordered a new election after a Harris operative was accused of ballot fraud.

Harris opted not to run again. McCready does not face a primary challenger.

McCready and the winner of the GOP primary will square off in a special election September 10 unless there's a primary runoff.

 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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