Two weeks after state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom was selected to replace US Rep. Chuck Edwards on the GOP ticket this fall, the Henderson County Republican is introducing herself to voters across the broader electorate.
Balkcom is currently serving in her second term in the General Assembly and was in the process of running for a third term before Edwards dropped his re-election bid following a censure from Congress related to inappropriate conduct towards staff.
Balkcom then sought the party’s nomination to replace him and was picked by North Carolina GOP’s Executive Committee to face Democrat Jamie Ager in western NC.
We looked at some of Balkcom’s past campaign contributions and how they stack up with her prior votes and policy stances.
Thousands from Duke Energy and votes to help the utility giant
Since her first campaign in 2022, Balkcom has received $5,500 in campaign contributions from Duke Energy, which is among the largest utility providers in North Carolina.
In January, she received a $2,000 contribution from Duke Energy. Months later, the company sought an 18% increase in utility bills over a two-year period. Duke has since lowered its request, which Attorney General Jeff Jackson argued would be a 9.3% raise over the same period beginning in January 2027.
By 2028, this would raise power bills by around $15 per month for the average household.
In the summer of 2025, Balkcom voted for a law titled the “Power Bill Reduction Act” and for the subsequent veto override after it was vetoed by Gov. Josh Stein (D).
The legislation was introduced in the state Senate by former state Sen. and former Duke Energy North Carolina president Paul Newton (R-Cabarrus). He resigned from office after introducing the bill to become the vice chancellor and general counsel at UNC-Chapel Hill.
In part, the bill allows Duke Energy to pass on the costs of power plants that are not yet operational to its customers and ends a requirement for the company to reduce their carbon emissions 70% by 2030. As a result, residential customers could pay around $87 million more each year.
Balkcom co-sponsored bill to stop adversaries from buying farmland, took Chinese money
One of the first bills Balkcom sponsored after entering the NC House of Representatives in 2023 was the NC Farmland and Military Protection Act, a bill to ban the governments and citizens of US adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—from buying farmland within a 25-mile radius of a military base.
Earlier this year, the bill, which Balkcom again sponsored, ultimately passed both chambers of the General Assembly and was signed into law by Stein on July 8.
The version of the bill that became law prohibits governments defined by the US Department of State as adversarial from owning farmland and land within 50 miles of a military facility.
“Our state’s agricultural land is one of our most important assets and it is common sense that we protect it from foreign enemies,” Balkcom said of the bill in February 2025.
However, on Sept. 22, 2025, as she was pushing to ban Chinese ownership of farmland, Balkcom accepted a $1,000 campaign contribution from the Syngenta PAC.
Carolina Journal reported that Greensboro-based Syngenta Seeds is a global leader in seed production and it has a 70-acre corporate campus in the Gate City. In 2017, ChemChina purchased the company for a then-record $43 billion.
In 2021, the Beijing-based ChemChina merged with Sinochem, a state-owned conglomerate also located in the Chinese capital, meaning Syngenta is now a subsidiary of the Chinese state.
According to FEC filings, Balkcom’s opponent in the upcoming November election, Ager, has not taken any campaign contributions from either Duke Energy or Syngenta.
