Brad Knott has represented North Carolina's 13th District since January 2025. He's new to Washington, but his first year already shows whose side he's on. Here are 3 things voters in North Carolina's 13th should know.
He's funded by corporate giants, not working families
Knott represents a district full of working families around Raleigh. So who pays for his campaign? Look at the organizations near the top of his donor list — money from their PACs, employees and owners:
- Accenture
- Home Depot
- The American Institute of CPAs
- The National Association of Realtors
- Blackstone Group
Several of these are among the largest corporations on Earth. When the people writing your representative's checks are giant Wall Street firms and big-box chains, it's a safe bet they're the ones he answers to — not the family down the street trying to make ends meet.
He voted to lock in DOGE's cuts while the Triangle took the worst of them
When Elon Musk's DOGE took a chainsaw to federal grants, the Research Triangle took the hardest hit in the country. North Carolina's 4th District, in the Raleigh-Durham area, lost 186 federal grants by May 2025, more than any other congressional district in America.
The damage to the region was massive:
- RTI International — a major research employer in Research Triangle Park — lost about $1 billion in contracts and laid off one-third of its workforce. Most of the grants it lost came from the now-dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development.
- UNC-Chapel Hill lost $38.4 million in federal grants, and the federal government terminated or froze more than $135 million at Duke University.
All told, North Carolina lost at least $714 million to DOGE cuts.
Knott went right along with it. On June 12, 2025, he voted for the Rescissions Act of 2025 — what CNN called a package of DOGE cuts — which cancelled about $9 billion Congress had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Foreign aid is exactly where the Triangle's biggest loss came from. These were jobs and research dollars in Knott's own region. He had a chance to fight for them. He voted to make a round of the cuts permanent instead.
He cheered on a masked, out-of-control ICE
We should all be able to live our lives without fear that law enforcement will turn on us. But ICE has become a secret police force, with masked agents grabbing people off the street and hauling them away from court hearings. In January 2026, federal immigration agents in Minneapolis killed U.S. citizen Renee Good and, just over two weeks later, ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
Brad Knott's response wasn't to demand accountability. He bragged about voting to restore ICE funding — pouring more money into the very agency that's terrorizing communities. A majority of Americans disapprove of how ICE operates. Knott wants to give it more.
Whose side is Brad Knott on?
A donor list full of corporate giants, a vote to lock in the cuts that gutted his region's economy, and a cheer for a police force that's killing citizens. Different issues, same instinct — and even in just his first year, the pattern is already set. Before you vote in 2026, it's worth knowing whose side Brad Knott is actually on. It hasn't been North Carolina's.
