by The leading Democrat candidate for the 11th Congressional seat in North Carolina is Jamie Ager. He calls himself a farmer and entrepreneur. He runs the family business called Hickory Nut Gap Farms which raises “sustainable meat”. If he wins the primary, he will face Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC11).
The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee will be funneling a lot of money into his race under their Red to Blue campaign. GRNC-PVF has rated Jamie Ager a zero-star candidate.
Ager calls himself a 4th-generation farmer. While that may be true on the face of it, Ager should also call himself a 3rd-generation politician.
Currently, his brother Eric holds the District 114 seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He has served two terms in the General Assembly. Eric Ager succeeded his father John who held essentially the same district in Buncombe County from 2014 through 2022. Eric voted against SB 50 – Freedom to Carry NC. Ager also voted against H193 when it passed and voted to sustain Gov. Josh Stein’s veto. That bill allowed private schools to arm teachers and staff as well as allowed concealed carry holders to carry on church property that also had a school when school was not in session. Unsurprisingly, Eric Ager is a zero-star candidate in the GRNC-PVF evaluations based upon his voting record.
As mentioned above, Jamie and Eric’s father John served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2014 through 2022. He ran for the NC State Senate in 2024 and lost to Warren Daniel. In that race, Ager was rated zero-stars in GRNC’s Remember in November evaluation and his voting record was a mere 13 (out of 100). When he was running for the State House in 2018, Ager came out in favor of “common-sense gun control laws” including universal background checks, an assault weapon ban, red flag laws, waiting periods, and “ending the gun show loophole.” (sic) Ager met his wife Annie Clarke when he was a student at Williams College and she was a student at Vassar according to his bio. The farm that Jamie Ager now runs was handed down over the generations from Annie Clarke’s parents and grandparents.
Finally, you have the political patriarch of the family – James McClure Clarke. Jamie Clarke served two terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives starting in 1976 followed by one term in the North Carolina Senate. Then in 1982 he was elected to the US House of Representatives to represent the 11th District of NC. He was defeated in 1984 but came back in 1986 to win two more terms in Congress. He was defeated in 1990 by Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC11) who went on to serve six terms in Congress. Clarke served as president of the Farmers Federation Cooperative succeeding his father-in-law James McClure, a Presbyterian minister, who had founded the organization.
I oppose dynastic politics. We have seen too many instances of it on both sides of the political aisle. It could be the Kennedys, the Dingells, the Bushes, or, in this case, the Clarkes and Agers. There should be no inherent right to an electoral office based upon family or name.
