BY TAYLOR HEEDEN, ChathamNews + Record

PITTSBORO — U.S. Representative Richard Hudson Jr. came to Pittsboro last Wednesday while campaigning to be reelected for his sixth term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hudson — a registered Republican representing the 8th district — is seeking North Carolina’s 9th congressional district seat after the 2020 census required the state to redraw its electoral districts and maps. Four of the counties Hudson represents moved into the 9th district, which now includes Chatham.

Hudson said he and his family are planning to move to Moore County because his home in Concord is outside of the 9th district.

“We don’t legally have to live in a district, but I think it’s important to be in the communities you’re in,” he said.

Hudson has spent almost 10 years in Washington and in that time has co-authored over 60 bills, most of which were bipartisan efforts.

“I identify a problem I want to solve back home and then I go find a Democrat that will work with me on the front end,” he said. “Even last year, as partisan as things were in Washington, I’ve gotten 11 bills out of the House (of Representatives), and President Biden signed four of them.”

Bipartisanship is crucial to passing laws, he said. He cited an example of this collaboration when he worked with Congressman Bobby Rush, the chairperson of the energy subcommittee for Hudson’s Energy and Commerce committee.

Hudson said he and Rush come from very different backgrounds; Rush co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther party in the 1960s, and Hudson hails from a military family in North Carolina.

Despite their disagreements on certain policy issues, Hudson said he and Rush are working together to help answer questions regarding the future of energy and commerce in the United States.

“He and I could not be more different in philosophy and background … but he and I care about each other, respect each other,” Hudson said. “We’ve been working on a workforce development bill for three Congresses now trying to look at what are the job skills we’re going to need in the 21st century in the energy sector … so that’s an issue where I may disagree with (him on) everything else, but we agree on that.”

Hudson’s priorities for a sixth term are lowering the inflation rate, curtailing gas prices and being a voice for Ft. Bragg’s military personnel.

He also wants to tackle a new problem: pandemic preparedness. Hudson says he’s working to reauthorize the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act, also known as the PAHPA Act.

“I am the lead Republican on this issue of national stockpile and pandemic preparedness,” he said. “It’s the perfect time for us Republicans and Democrats to come together and look at what did we get right this last pandemic, what did we get wrong, and what do we need to improve going forward to prepare for the next pandemic.”

Water quality has also become an important issue for some Chatham voters, and Hudson said he was approached at a campaign event at the Pittsboro Rotary Club regarding 1,4-Dioxane contamination in the Haw River. Hudson said he has a record of voting to support the communities affected by contaminated water as one of four Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote in favor of a bill establishing regulations on PFAS, also known as “forever” chemicals.

“I started working on it because we have an issue in Cumberland County on the Cape Fear River,” he said. “I’ve not been afraid to fight for clean water for people, so I’m going to look into this same issue, and you can count on me to lead the fight.”

Hudson said to create change and pass laws, congressional representatives must be willing to compromise and work “across the aisle” to accomplish what voters want.

He said he wants to be Chatham’s congressional champion, and he said he would make sure to talk to voters from all walks of life, regardless of political affiliation.

“When I decide how to vote, I vote based on my principles and the information in front of me and what I think is in the best interest of people in my district, and I believe I need to be transparent about that,” he said. “I’m also willing to compromise my preferences and work across the aisle and get things done for people in my community. I’ve got a record of doing that now for nine years, and I’d be honored to have the opportunity to do that for Chatham County.”

https://chathamnewsrecord.com/stories/congressman-hudson-visits-chatham-on-campaign-trail,13094

Dean-Paul Stephens

The Courier-Tribune

March 14, 2022

Increased cost of living, redistricting, and the ongoing conflict in Europe were on District 9 Representative

 Richard Hudson’s mind, as he toured his Congressional district, Friday, meeting with local officials. 

First elected to Congress in 2013, Hudson said he wanted to spend the day reacquainting himself with his district following recent redistricting changes. Under the current district maps, Hudson, who is the incumbent, will face off against challengers Mike Andriani, Jennyfer Bucardo, and Francisco Rios during the May 17 primaries. The winner of the primary will face Democrat Ben Clark in the general election, currently scheduled for Nov. 8.

“I’m thrilled the new…district I’m seeking to represent will also include Randolph County,” Hudson said. “My first two terms in Congress I represented Randolph County, well part of Randolph County at the time. I really got to know this community, there are great folks here and I’m thrilled to be able to earn the votes of the people here again.” 

Hudson said that although he, like his conservative colleagues, was not happy with the Supreme Court’s rejection of Republican-drawn maps, he said he is happy to be back in the Randolph community and wants to avail himself to locals. 

“I really feel like I understand these communities,” Hudson said adding that he is impressed with the ongoing economic development but is concerned with the impact gas prices and inflation is having on average residents. 

“I understand the pain you’re feeling, it’s real,” Hudson said. “When you go to the pump when you go to the grocery store, I think the average food cost in Randolph County [has increased] and that’s real.”

Hudson said, in regards to inflation, both parties could be blamed. 

“We spent too much too when we were in charge,” Hudson said. “I think that spike you’re seeing [in inflation] is caused by overspending in Washington.” 

Speaking about gas prices Hudson said there are ways to reduce them, such as increasing stateside production. 

“I learned a tool, it’s a very simple concept of supply and demand,” Hudson said. “You’ve got a lot of demand and if you don’t have a lot of supply the price will go up.” 

He said seeking energy independence will have a lasting impact, on both the country and the pocketbooks of regular citizens. 

“I’m…beyond thrilled to be able to be their congressman again,” Hudson said. “I believe to be your representative, I need to know you and you need to know me.” 

https://www.courier-tribune.com/restricted/?return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.courier-tribune.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2F2022%2F03%2F14%2Fbusy-day-congressman-richard-hudson-makes-pit-stop-randolph-county-election-visit-campaign%2F7001954001%2F

By Staff Report, The Richmond Observer

HAMLET — A congressman hoping to once again represent part of Richmond County paid a visit to a local museum on Friday.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-Concord, toured the Hamlet Depot and Museum and met with Director Mechelle Presslar and Secretary/Treasurer Angie Averitte, according to social media posts.

The Silver Meteor exhibit in the Tornado Building is dedicated to Riley Watson, Hudson’s great-uncle. Watson was the brother of Hudson’s grandfather.

“My grandfather worked at the Hamlet train station until retirement with the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad and my mom partly grew up there,” Hudson said in a post. “It was great to visit the station and museum while in Hamlet and also see the Seaboard exhibit dedicated to my uncle, Riley Watson.”

Both the Depot and Hudson made posts on Facebook.

Hudson’s post included a video.

“My family roots run so deep here, and I’m just thrilled that Richmond County is now part of the new 9th District, and I have the opportunity to once again represent this community in the United States Congress.”

Last month, a three-judge panel — including Richmond County Superior Court Judge Dawn Layton — rejected a second map from state legislators and opted for one drawn by “special masters.”

The district now comprises Scotland, Hoke, Lee, Chatham and Randolph counties in addition to northwest Cumberland, western Harnett and a sliver of eastern Richmond — stretching from Hamlet and northward on N.C. 177 to include Marston, Hoffman and Derby.

The rest of Richmond County is in the 8th District with Anson, Union, Montgomery, Stanly, Rowan and Davidson counties, as well as eastern Cabarrus. The latter is Hudson’s home county.

Congressman Dan Bishop, who currently represents all of Richmond County in the U.S. House of Representatives, has filed to run for the 8th District.Advertisements

While Bishop is unopposed, Hudson is not.

Hudson is being challenged in a Republican primary on May 17 against Mike Adriani of Fayetteville, Francisco Rios of Charlotte, and Jen Bucardo of Asheboro.

The RO is unsure if Adriani’s address falls within the district. However, of the other three candidates, including Hudson, Bucardo is the only resident.

But, a quirk in the U.S. Constitution allows House members to live outside the district they are elected to represent.

The winner of the primary will face state Sen. Ben Clark, a Hoke County Democrat and Air Force veteran.

Hudson has represented, at some point, eight of the nine counties in the new district, with Chatham being the exception, according to the congressman’s office. Hudson also had an office in Richmond County at one time before maps were redrawn in 2016.

Following his Hamlet visit, Hudson posted a video of himself filling up at a gas station in Pittsboro, which is in Chatham County, calling for President Joe Biden to open domestic energy exploration.

Hudson also posted a video Thursday during a visit to Laurinburg.

https://richmondobserver.com/local-news/hudson-visits-hamlet-depot-explains-family-ties-to-area.html

Gavin Stone, Richmond County Daily Journal

HAMLET — Congressman Richard Hudson made a stop in Hamlet on Thursday to visit his family’s former stomping grounds and share some of his focuses going into the campaign season.

Hudson, a Republican, previously represented Richmond County from 2013 to 2015 prior to a redrawing of the maps in 2016. The latest version of North Carolina’s congressional map has Richmond County split between districts 8 and 9, which is apparently the first time in the county’s history that it has had two representatives, according to a historical record of U.S. Congressional District shapes maintained by UCLA.

Richmond County’s current U.S. Congressman, Rep. Dan Bishop, opted to run for the newly drawn District 8, which includes all of Union, Anson, Montgomery, Stanly, Rowan and Davidson counties, with the eastern portion of Cabarrus County and the western two-thirds of Richmond County. Hudson currently represents District 8 which — until November — stretches from Cumberland to Cabarrus, just above Richmond, and is running for the newly drawn District 9, which includes Hamlet, Dobbins Heights and Hoffman in Richmond County, as well as Moore, Scotland, Hoke, Lee, Chatham, Randolph, and parts of Harnett and Cumberland counties.

Hudson will face three other Republicans in the upcoming primary — Mike Andriani, Jennyfer Bucardo, and Francisco Rios — and the winner will face Democrat Ben Clark in November.

Though it’s been a few years since Hudson has been on the ballot in Richmond County, his connections go much deeper. His grandfather, J.F. Watson, worked for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad — with an office on the second floor of the Hamlet Depot — for 32 years before retiring as the roadmaster in Roanoke Rapids. His mother lived in Hamlet as a young child, and his uncle, R.L. “Riley” Watson was born in the city.

Hudson was born in Franklin, VA but grew up in Charlotte, and currently resides in Concord (congressional representatives are not constitutionally required to live in the district they represent, just the same state). He worked on Rep. Robin Hayes’s staff for six years, and during that time was involved in local projects including securing grants to turn the Imperial Foods ruins into a memorial park, and in the early 2000s was involved in getting the Hamlet Depot moved 240 feet across the railroad tracks to where it currently sits.

His visit on Thursday was his first time back in Hamlet since 2015; Hudson said it was “personally painful” when the maps were redrawn in 2016 to cut Richmond County out of his jurisdiction.

“This is home to me, my roots run so deep in this community — I love this community,” he said. “I’m just thrilled that I have the opportunity to earn the votes of this community again and represent this community.”

“I feel like to do my job I’ve got to be here in the community, the community needs to know me and I need to know them,” he added. “That doesn’t mean I will always vote the same way they would have done it but they know that I’m always accessible and always listening and trying to make decisions on their behalf … so that means coming here a lot, or having my staff here when I can’t be.”

On the issues

Hudson has been an advocate for parents to be allowed to make the decision about whether their child wears masks in school, not the government. The Fayetteville Observer reported that on Feb. 11, Hudson sent a letter to Cumberland County Health Director Jennifer Green “respectfully urging” her to end the county’s mask mandate, which had outlasted the Board of Education’s vote the prior week to end the school system’s mask mandate.

He said that we should “follow the science” which he argues shows that the harm of masks on the development of kids outweighs the risks of them getting COVID-19, and that masks aren’t as effective at slowing the spread as improving ventilation and changing the arrangement of seats in the classroom.

“If you’re learning English and you can’t see the lips of your teacher, it hurts your ability to learn English. It also has harmed the emotional development of our kids because they can’t see each other, so I think the science tells us that the damage done by masks in schools is much worse than [the risks of not wearing them],” Hudson said in an interview. “[COVID-19] is not as harmful to kids, so if that changed, if a future variant was very deadly for children then I would want to follow the science and maybe we’d change something we were doing but right now the science tells us the kids don’t need that mask. My position is let the parents decide: if they want their kids wearing a mask that’s their decision.”

With rising gas prices and new questions about the country’s use of Russian oil, Hudson has advocated for President Joe Biden to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which he canceled on his first day in office, in order to help “unleash American energy.” Hudson is a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and said that Biden’s decisions to continue to limit permits for drilling since his first day have limited the country’s energy supply, contributing to the situation we find ourselves in now.

“If the President were to approve [the Keystone XL pipeline] today, it’ll take at least a year to bring that oil online but it sends the signal today, to the futures market, and I think you’ll see prices go down if he’ll start making some of these smart policy decisions,” Hudson said.

Asked about the planned $63 million investment in Richmond County to build a new solar farm, Hudson said he supports “all of the above” in terms of energy, but believes that markets should be allowed to determine what is best. While solar is a positive development and creates jobs, Hudson said the issue is consistent storage of the energy produced, which isn’t as much of an issue with natural gas and nuclear energy.

“I think adding solar is good but my approach has been: let’s push technology, let’s push innovation, because once we figure out that storage problem wind and solar are going to be much better,” Hudson said.

John Henderson The Fayetteville Observer

After a hard-fought campaign, Congressman Richard Hudson said that during his fifth term representing the 8th District he is going to “roll up his sleeves” and address pressing issues of the district.

Among them: working to find a vaccine for the coronavirus, lowering the price of prescription drugs, and continuing the fight to bring resources to soldiers and their families at Fort Bragg, he said.

The district includes a large portion of the southern Piedmont area of the state from Concord to Spring Lake.

With all 176 precincts reporting, Hudson on Tuesday night received 201,181 votes, or 53.35%, while Democratic challenger Patricia Timmons-Goodson received 175,891 votes, or 46.65%, according to unofficial returns.

In a prepared statement, Timmons-Goodson said she is “proud of the effort we put together.

“We ran a strong campaign and gave the voters the information they needed to make an informed choice, and they have spoken. I wish Rep. Hudson well in his next term,” she said in an emailed statement.

Speaking at a victory party at the Cabarrus County Republican Party in Concord late Tuesday night, Hudson said it has been a tough campaign.

He said the national Democratic Party spent millions in the campaign trying to “lie about” his record.

“But the truth prevails,” he said. “The truth did indeed prevail.”

Looking to his next term, Hudson said he plans to continue to work across the aisle with Democrats in Washington to get things done.

“I am humbled by the confidence the voters in this community have given me,” he said. “I will always put your best interest first. But we have a lot of work left ahead of us.  We’ve got to safely recover from COVID-19, deliver a vaccine to all of the workers and small businesses (that) still need help.”

Hudson said it is really a challenging time in America, “but tonight you sent a message to Washington that brighter days are ahead.”

“In this campaign, I have vowed that I will continue to work for all of the people in this district — Republicans, Democrats, unaffiliated — to rebuild the greatest economy we have ever seen in our lifetime,” he said.

Hudson said too many of America’s prescription drugs come from countries like China. He said he promises to continue working to lower the price of prescription drugs and bring their manufacturing back to America.

“I make a promise to continue to clean up our drinking water from dangerous chemicals like GenX,” he said, referring to the chemical coming from the Chemours Plant in southern Cumberland County that is considered to be a carcinogen. It has been found in drinking water wells in the Gray’s Creek area. The company has said the levels of the compound found in the drinking water are not dangerous to people’s health.

And most importantly, Hudson said, he will “continue doing everything in my power to support our veterans, to support our troops and to support our families. Being Fort Bragg’s congressman is incredible.”

During the campaign, Timmons-Goodson’s campaign irked Hudson when she ran ads saying he wasn’t doing enough to fight for veterans and Fort Bragg soldiers. 

“I’ll never stop fighting for those men and women in uniform and for their incredible families,” he said.

He said veterans and their caregivers “need our support.” 

“We are working together,” Hudson said. “I know we can solve these problems, and I know we can leave our community better off for my son, Lane, and for all the children out there.”

Hudson’s press secretary, Greg Steele, said Wednesday that Hudson’s commitment to fighting the coronavirus can be found in a bill that he filed last week, H.R. 14, that would provide more than $47 billion in the fight.

“Congressman Hudson said that will be the first thing to focus on, is to how to fully emerge from COVID-19,” Steele said. “That bill is going to be a big center point here, probably still in the remaining part of this Congress.”

Hudson explained his support for the bill in a news release last week.

“I’m honored to lead this effort to pass targeted solutions to combat COVID-19 and prepare for future pandemics,” Hudson said. “This bill makes important reforms to our telehealth and mental health services. These vital improvements will help our seniors and those stuck at home. It also builds on our efforts to strengthen the Strategic National Stockpile, our testing systems, and our drug supply.”

Steele said Wednesday that Hudson’s district now includes all of Cumberland County and he vows to represent every resident.

“In terms of federal races, Congressman Hudson’s vote percentage outperformed every Republican in Cumberland County,” Steele said. “And we feel that is a direct result of his commitment to working across the aisle, especially to support veterans, troops and their families at Fort Bragg.”

Steele said Hudson will continue to push the “Care for the Veteran Caregiver Act” that he filed earlier this year along with Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathleen M. Rice of New York.

“Congressman Hudson is going to keep pushing for that bill,” Steele said. “It expands stipends for caregivers and then streamlines some of the eligibility requirements.”

https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/04/richard-hudson-vows-fight-covid-19-support-military-congress/6158887002/

Moore County, NC – Congressman Richard Hudson, Fort Bragg’s Congressman and candidate for North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District, was joined by veterans, military families and a Gold Star Spouse today for a virtual press conference to set the record straight on Congressman Hudson’s record of supporting troops, veterans and their families. Today’s announcement follows false and misleading advertisements from the House Majority Pac and DCCC  on behalf of and by Congressman Hudson’s opponent, Patricia Timmons-Goodson claiming that Congressman Hudson “skipped out” on pay raises for troops. One ad run by Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority Pac, was deemed ‘mostly false’ by CBS 17.

“Serving as Fort Bragg’s Congressman is an honor and voters, as well as our troops, veterans and their families, deserve to know the truth about my record,” said Congressman Hudson. “Claims that I skipped out on pay raises for troops are lies and do not reflect my record of helping secure critical provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act to give troops a 10% raise, increase support for military family education, and expand access to the VA for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.”

Joining Congressman Hudson today were Concord City Councilman and veteran John Sweat, retired Army Sgt. Mike Verardo who was severely wounded in action as a member of the 82nd Airborne, Michelle Black, a Gold Star Spouse of 3rd Special Forces Group Sgt. Bryan Black who was killed in action in Tongo Tongo on Oct. 4, 2017, and Army Special Forces veteran John Zumwalt. Each speaker discussed Congressman Hudson’s record serving troops, their families and veterans.

While ads being run on TV and mailed to voters claim Congressman Hudson “skipped a vote to give military families a much needed pay raise” and “turned his back on military families,” these ads fail to mention that Congressman Hudson wrote sections of the National Defense Authorization Act which awarded a pay raise to troops, a 10% increase in Hazardous Duty Pay, strengthened and expanded the Preservation of the Force and Family program for Special Forces, expanded the VA’s Burn Pit Registry for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Egypt and Syria, strengthened the Exceptional Family Member Program that supports special needs education for military families, and improved Impact Aid funding for education around military bases.