Dan Murphy, a Rolesville resident and Democrat, sent out a news release Sunday announcing he will be a candidate for the state’s 2nd Congressional District, a seat now held by Republican Representative George Holding.
Murphy’s only agenda is to protect Social Security and Medicare for future generations. “The current Congress is preparing to sell out these critical programs to Wall Street interests,” he said in his statement. “There is constant talk about cutting benefits, raising the minimum eligibility age, eliminating cost-of-living adjustments and turning Medicare into a voucher-based program. When a worker pays into a program like Social Security for 30, 40, even 50 years, those anticipated benefits can no longer be referred to as an entitlement. That becomes a right. I’m not going to let anyone take these programs away from my children and grandchildren. Not on my watch.”
The elections for congressional seats will be held in November of 2018. The only elections this year are for municipal seats.
Holding is in his third term and is expected to run for a fourth.
Voters may wonder what happened to a ruling by a federal three-judge panel in August of 2016 which found that 28 of the North Carolina House and Senate districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders but did not issue a ruling then as to how the districts should be amended. In November, after the election where voters elected people in the districts declared to be unconstitutional, the panel ordered the General Assembly to redraw the districts maps by March of this year and hold elections in any redrawn district this year.
In late December General Assembly leaders appealed the ruling to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and he issued a temporary ruling that blocked the redistricting and elections. That block is still in place and the court as a whole has not issued any ruling on the case. Therefore, the districts remain though unconstitutional
