Richard Hudson points to Fort Bragg, energy, border, and public-safety legislation. Richard Ojeda offers promises voters should measure against his record.
Neighbors keep asking me one question this fall: Who actually gets things done for us? In the 9th District, the answer is Rep. Richard Hudson, because he can point to bills, not just promises.
Start with Fort Bragg. When the Fayetteville State Veterans Home closed in 2024, 85 aging veterans were displaced. Hudson wrote the bill transferring 20 acres of Fort Bragg land so North Carolina can build a replacement. It passed both chambers without opposition in September and awaits the president’s signature. Hudson also says he secured $140 million for Fort Bragg in this year’s defense bill.
He has written bills that became law, too. His 2017 Protecting Patient Access to Emergency Medications Act, which passed the House 404-0, lets paramedics give controlled-substance medications under standing orders from their medical directors. Two 2014 laws he wrote reformed how the TSA buys equipment and limited security fees charged to air passengers.
On power bills, Hudson voted for the Ratepayer Protection Act, which directs state regulators to consider making data centers pay for the grid upgrades they need. It passed the House 417-3 before stalling in the Senate. On guns, he wrote the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.
His opponent, Democrat Richard Ojeda, is a retired Army major who says he spent 15 years at Fort Bragg. I respect that service. But Ojeda names goals without offering a plan for how to reach them.
He told The News & Observer this month that he would fight to “lower prescription drug and energy costs.” His only energy specific there was that Congress should investigate “massive tax breaks for industries like data centers.” In June he promised that “every parent pays no more than $10 a day for childcare,” without saying how, beyond closing “tax loopholes.” He also wants a “5% wealth tax on billionaires” and “Overturning Right to Work on the federal law.”
His record in West Virginia points the other way on energy. Mother Jones reported in 2018 that he proposed a 2.5 percent hike in the natural gas severance tax and an extra 15 percent tax on gas shipped out of state. Higher taxes on energy producers don’t lower energy bills; they tend to raise them. One 2014 study estimated a 5 percent severance tax could raise natural gas prices as much as 3.8 percent.
In two years in the state Senate, the only bill he led into law was a marijuana bill, the 2017 Medical Cannabis Act. That was it. Then he resigned in January 2019, halfway through his term, to run for president.
Temperament matters, too. In a 2022 livestream, Fox News reported, Ojeda said he’d “be willing to go to jail to kick the sh-t out of” Trump adviser Stephen Miller. He later said he “would not use those same words today.”
But the pattern is hard to miss. In an undated clip shared widely on X, he can be heard saying, “I wish General Flynn would be beaten,” before adding, “and then let him get friggin’ tried.” In another that circulated in July, he says the only way to get rights back is “fighting for them. That’s it. Bleeding for them. Dying for them.” His campaign says he meant voting, volunteering and free speech, not violence.
If we take them at their word, fine. But this month he also called Hudson a “COWARD” on X. Heated words are not a plan. The 9th District deserves a congressman who argues like a neighbor and delivers like one.
Early voting runs through Oct. 31, and Election Day is Nov. 3. Results beat promises. Please vote for Richard Hudson.
