NC Democratic primary challenger has history of racist remarks, lawmaker says

Michael Wray, a former 10-term state Representative running for his old seat in 2026, faces claims that he once told a fellow lawmaker to “watch out for the Blacks.” 

State senator Graig Meyer first entered the North Carolina General Assembly through the other chamber. 

In November of 2013, Meyer was appointed to fill the House seat of Valerie Foushee, who moved to the state Senate that year and would progress nine years later to Congress. Meyer is a legislative old-hand now, but then he was a newbie replacing a stalwart, and in his first weeks in office, several House Democratic colleagues approached him with advice.

One of them was then-State  Rep. Michael Wray, a 10-term House member from Warren Co., who came up to him after a speech by President Barack Obama at NC State in the first weeks of 2014.

The legislature was not in session for the holidays, Meyer said, and he’d never met Wray before he walked over.

Wray’s advice? 

“Watch out for the Blacks.”

Meyer recounted the conversation in a recent Substack post that quickly gained media attention across the state, because Wray lost his seat in a 2024 Democratic primary election to Rodney Pierce, who is Black, but has filed for a rematch next year.

Meyer represents Orange, Person, and Caswell Counties. He has served with both Wray and Pierce, and knows them well, he said in a telephone interview with Cardinal & Pine last week.

He’s backing Pierce.

Meyer is revealing the news he’d kept to himself the last 12 years, he told Cardinal & Pine, because he’s holding fundraiser events for Pierce and wanted to help his constituents understand why he was campaigning for a member of the other chamber from several counties north of his own.

Wray’s comment shocked him, Meyer said, as much for the timing of them as the racist content.

“I was excited to see the president,” Meyer said in the interview. “I was excited to meet some other fellow legislators for the first time. And it was a good event. And when it was over and I was walking out, Wray kind of saddled up to me and introduced himself, which was great.”

Wray gave some general guidance at first, Meyer said, “like do this, don’t do that type of things,” then, Meyer recounted, Wray said, “‘Now, you know, you gotta watch out for the Blacks.’”

Meyer said he doesn’t remember the specific context of Wray’s remarks, but he remembers how they landed.

“I was just dumbstruck, like having just sat there with the country’s first Black president, our president, and hearing [Wray] say something that was so clearly racially divisive. I mean, I didn’t know what to say in the moment, right? I was a younger, less confident version of myself as a legislator.”

He knows what to say now.

“I love Rodney Pierce,” Meyer said in the interview. “And I served with Michael Wray—I know what a problematic person he is.”

Wray told The Assembly last week that Meyer’s accusations were “complete bullshit. Never happened,” but he did not respond to an email from Cardinal & Pine last week seeking comment.

Another former NC House member, Raymond Smith Jr., a Wayne County Democrat, posted a comment on Meyer’s Substack piece, writing that “I had a similar experience the first time I met former Rep. Michael Wray.”

Smith and Wray’s legislative offices were near each other, Smith said, and Wray introduced himself in the hallway.

“‘You and me are probably a lot alike,’” Smith said Wray told him. “‘I think Whites should marry Whites and Blacks should marry Blacks; don’t you?’”

Wray helped Republicans override 14 of Gov. Cooper’s vetoes

Few elected Democrats in North Carolina publicly mourned Wray’s loss to Pierce in 2024, and now that he wants a rematch, Democrats are beginning to rally behind Pierce and criticize Wray for his voting record during his time in office.

Republicans in the House lost their supermajority in the 2024 elections, meaning they now need Democrats to help to circumvent vetoes from Democratic governor, Josh Stein. Pierce has voted with Democrats to help sustain some vetoes. Wray often sided with Republicans against Democrats.

Wray voted with Republicans 14 times to override vetoes from former Gov. Roy Cooper. Wray also spent a lot of time in the office of Tim Moore, then the powerful Republican House Speaker.

“[Wray] was one of the most disloyal Democrats,” Meyer said. 

His frequent override votes of Cooper’s vetoes was just “the most public manifestation,” Meyer said. “He worked consistently to undermine democratic efforts and to align as many Democrats as he could with things that Moore was trying to accomplish.”

Among other votes, Wray was one of just a few Democrats who voted for a bill expanding the state’s private school voucher program for wealthy families, while voting for several Republican budgets that continued to exacerbate the state’s public school funding crisis. Wray also helped override a Cooper veto that sought to protect transgender youth.

This year, Wray is publicly pitching himself to Republican voters in the district, NC Newsline has reported, urging them to change their party affiliations on their voter registration forms to unaffiliated so that they can vote in the Democratic primary, 

During the 2024 primary election campaign, several mysterious fliers began circulating in Wray’s district, touting his service to the community and urging voters to reject Pierce and stick with Wray. The fliers were created and distributed by a conservative group with deep ties to Tim Moore, then the ultra-conservative Republican speaker of the NC House. 

Before Meyer published his Substack, Wray strongly defended his voting record. 

“I am not going to apologize for working in the back rooms of the State Legislature to make sure that our region gets money from the state budget,” Wray told NC Newsline soon after filing for election in July.

But the consequences of Wray’s votes and his attempt to return go far beyond simple party allegiance, Meyer said. 

Wray’s votes, he said, often ran counter to good governance. The residents of Pierce’s district, which covers Warren, North Hampton, and Halifax Counties, deserve better, Meyer said. 

“The schools in [Pierce’s district] are some of the lowest funded in the state. And the only way we’re ever gonna be able to significantly increase education funding is to either have a governor with a very strong veto or have a Democratic majority, and Michael Wray actively works to undermine both of those.”

The primary is expected to be close, just like it was in 2024. Pierce won by just 34 votes.

This article has been updated to fix an error. NC Sen. Graig Meyer represents Orange, Person, and Caswell Counties, not Wake County.