Winston-Salem City Council member Dan Besse is making another run at the state House of Representatives. Besse says he will run for the District 75 seat; ostensibly his opponent will will be incumbent Rep. Donny Lambeth, who defeated Besse in 2018. However, the court-ordered redraw of state House and Senate districts has not begun, so Besse’s opponent has yet to be officially determined.
In addition to his run for the House in ’18, Besse made an unsuccessful attempt for lieutenant governor in 2008. Besse is a liberal member of a liberal City Council–should he square off against Lambeth again, it would be an entertaining race. Lambeth labeled Besse “Sanctuary City Dan” in response to Besse’s support for a resolution to make Winston-Salem a “welcoming city” in response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. For his part, Besse said that Lambeth as part of an “inhumane” Republican party that refused to expand Medicaid in North Carolina.
In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news, both issues have heated up–to say the least–in the last two years.