Dem Linked to Inflammatory Posts About Trump Backers Flips GOP Seat - Newsweek

In September, her own party dropped her. On Tuesday, she won.

Democrat Shelly Headen defeated incumbent Republican John Blust in North Carolina House District 62 in Guilford County by 233 votes, according to complete but unofficial results. Republicans had held the seat for more than two decades.

The Guilford County Democratic Party and North Carolina House Democratic Caucus both withdrew their support from Headen after inflammatory social media comments resurfaced in September. It was too late to remove her name from the ballot.

Blust could still request a recount. State law allows one when the margin is 1 percent or less of the votes cast; Headen’s lead is about 0.5 percent. Blust would have to submit a written request to the Guilford County Board of Elections by 5 p.m. November 16, the first business day after the county finalizes its count on November 13. Newsweek reached out to Blust to ask whether he plans to request a recount and for his reaction to the result, but did not receive a response before publication.

On August 23, 2024, Headen’s X account, @shelly_headen, posted: “Ready for the MAGAs to die off!!”

Headen has since denied having an X account, though the House Democratic Caucus had linked to one under her name, The Assembly reported.

In a March 4, 2025, Facebook comment, purportedly by Headen, read: "I think our only hope is an attack on US soil," naming Alabama and Louisiana as preferred locations because that is "where the stupid people live." The comment resurfaced September 10, when the North Carolina House Republicans' X account posted a screenshot of it. Headen told The Assembly she did not remember writing the comment or know whether it was real.

On September 11, the North Carolina House Republicans' X account shared a screenshot that appears to show a Facebook post of Headen at the memorial at Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp in Germany, with the caption "This is where Trump supporters belong." Headen told the Greensboro News & Record she did not post the image and believes the caption was edited onto a real photo.

Democrats moved first. In a statement to WRAL, the North Carolina House Democratic Caucus called Headen’s posts “unacceptable” and said it “condemns these comments without qualification and will not support Shelly Headen’s candidacy.”

The Guilford County Democratic Party went further. In a statement posted to social media, it wrote that "language that references concentration camps, uses derogatory terms toward neurodivergent individuals, or invokes political violence is completely indefensible and unacceptable." The party said it was “formally withdrawing all financial, operational, and organizational support” from Headen’s campaign.

Democrats couldn't replace her. Absentee ballots began going out September 4, and state law bars party nominees from withdrawing after that date.

Republicans, meanwhile, turned the posts into a statewide issue. "A candidate bankrolled and backed by [Governor] Josh Stein and House Democratic Leadership is calling for an attack on American soil," House Speaker Destin Hall wrote on X. "Absolutely disgusting."

Headen has acknowledged writing anti-Trump posts but says she cannot recall their exact wording. She has denied posting the Dachau image, said she does not remember writing the “attack” comment, and denied having the X account behind the “MAGAs” post.

“I can’t remember what I’ve posted,” she told The Assembly.

Headen told Carolina Public Press that she had first planned to decline the seat if elected but had since changed her mind. “I have apologized, and I am moving forward,” she said.

Newsweek reached out to Headen to ask whether she posted the Dachau image, whether the @shelly_headen account was hers and whether she plans to take office in January, but did not receive a response before publication.

Blust won the district by about 7 percentage points in 2024, 53 percent to 47 percent. On Tuesday, he lost it by 233 votes. Unofficial results from the State Board of Elections show Headen with 21,367 votes, or 50.27 percent, to Blust’s 21,134, or 49.73 percent.

The Republican-led legislature redrew the state's House districts in 2023. Roy Cooper, then North Carolina's Democratic governor and now its U.S. senator-elect, had no power to veto the maps and called them "gerrymandering on steroids." Republican leaders said they were fulfilling their "constitutional duty" after the state Supreme Court reversed an earlier ruling against partisan gerrymandering.

Statewide, the results were lopsided. Cooper won the Senate race with 58.66 percent of the vote to 39.14 percent for Republican Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman. In the legislature, Democrats flipped more than 16 Republican-held seats in the state House and four in the state Senate, winning their first state House majority since 2010.

Headen's victory came despite the loss of her party's backing, and on a night when Democrats decisively won control of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in what was widely seen as a backlash against President Donald Trump.

Trump rejected that reading. "I wasn't on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!" he wrote on Truth Social as the results came in. In a phone interview with Fox News, he congratulated Democrats, saying they "did a good job" and "fought hard." He said he didn't view the results as "a hit on me" and blamed Republican candidates, saying voters "didn't like the candidates."

If Headen’s lead holds, she will join the new Democratic majority in Raleigh. Newsweek reached out to the North Carolina House Democratic Caucus to ask whether it will welcome her as a member and whether its September statement withdrawing support still stands, but did not receive a response before publication.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Steven Frank and Edward T. Cummins