WCDP Election Central – Candidate Information
Tim Longest
NC House of Representatives
District 034
Candidate Statement:
Tim is an eastern North Carolina native who made Raleigh home. He was born and raised in Greenville, where his father worked for nearly three decades as a public-school teacher and his mother works as a physician on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. Tim is a proud, lifelong product of North Carolina public schools. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, Tim chose to become a lawyer to stand up for working people and civil rights, receiving his law degree with honors from UNC School of Law, where he served on the North Carolina Law Review and was inducted into UNC’s Order of the Golden Fleece.
After graduating from law school, Tim moved to Raleigh to start his legal career as a law clerk on both state appellate courts. In 2019, he married his wife, Landen, who is completing her PhD at NC State University. Tim serves on the North Carolina Bar Association Appellate Rules Committee and the Raleigh Human Relations Commission. In 2015, he was also selected for the inaugural class of Jamie Kirk Hahn Fellows with the Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation in Raleigh.
Importance of this Race:
The NC House of Representatives consists of 120 members who serve two-year terms. Wake County’s delegation includes 13 Representatives, 12 of whom are Democrats. Right now, the NCGOP holds a supermajority, meaning they don’t have to “cross the aisle” to negotiate or pass bills into law. This supermajority also enables Republicans to override the Governor’s veto. Republicans in the General Assembly have pushed through bills limiting the Governor’s power and injected partisan politics into our judicial system. In order to break this supermajority, Democrats need to at least hold all current seats and win an additional one to begin restoring a functional democracy in our General Assembly.
Office Responsibilities:
- The NC General Assembly is the legislative branch of our government and makes laws for North Carolina.
- It is made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, collectively known as the General Assembly.
- The General Assembly meets biennially and all members are elected for two-year terms.
- The House consists of 120 members and the presiding officer is known as the Speaker of the House.