Meet Richard Ojeda, the Vet Who Beat ‘Fort Bragg’s Congressman’ Richard Hudson

Democrat Richard Ojeda grew up in West Virginia and spent much of his adult life in the Army, including years stationed at Fort Bragg and living in Fayetteville.

He liked the area so much that he moved to Moore County in 2020 after several years living in West Virginia following his retirement from the Army.

“I ran a nonprofit, I worked at the high school level, and I became a state legislator” in West Virginia, Ojeda, 56, said. “But we missed the people of North Carolina, and we missed the access to everything that you have in this area.” 

He also brought his in-laws, parents, and two sisters. “We absolutely missed it, and I’ll tell you right now, we’ll never leave this place,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Now he will get to represent it in Congress after defeating seven-term Republican Richard Hudson in a 9th Congressional District race few saw as in play.

In West Virginia, Ojeda served two years in the state Senate and made bids for U.S. House, Senate, and, briefly, president.

Ojeda, who retired from the military in 2013, said running in North Carolina this year was physically grueling. “I mean in this campaign and putting all the boots on the ground that we did, (my weight) went from 227 to 191,” he said. He weight-trains daily, he said.

“I was the smallest kid when I grew up,” he said. “I was the smallest kid in class. I was an underdog. I had to fight almost every single day.”

Ojeda said he started out as an enlisted soldier, and later used the Army’s Green to Gold program to go to college and become an officer. He retired as a major after 24 years of service.

His father was a military nurse, he said, and his grandfather was a coal miner who had immigrated from Mexico.

West Virginians didn’t understand the Spanish pronunciation of “Ojeda,” where the “j” is pronounced like an “h,” he explained. “So my grandfather thought that the best way he could guarantee his children would get a better opportunity was to assimilate and basically say “oh-jed-uh” instead of “oh-hay-duh.”

Ojeda said he is proud of his heritage, which also makes him the 9th District’s first Hispanic congressman.

Part of the Blue Wave

Ojeda’s victory was part of a blue tsunami across the state and nation.

North Carolina’s 14-person congressional delegation, which Ojeda will join in January, is a prime example. It is tracking to flip from a 10-4 Republican majority to a 10-4 Democratic advantage. This assumes no outcomes change following recounts of close results, the addition of absentee ballots from overseas, and the counting of provisional ballots.

The 9th District was previously seen as a secure Republican seat. But in preliminary results as of Wednesday evening, Ojeda led Hudson 138,707 votes to 132,692—a 2.2-point margin.

Ojeda felt confident he had a strong lead in early voting among Democrats and independents, and he also found a number of dissatisfied Republicans as he campaigned in the region.

Hudson is chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, making him the House GOP’s fifth-highest-ranking member. The NRCC raises and spends money to increase the number of Republicans in Congress.

Ojeda said Hudson called him on Wednesday morning to offer congratulations.

“It was a great phone call,” Ojeda said. Hudson outlined to him some of the constituent services matters that he had been working on, he said, “and I’m going to pick up those cases to try to make sure that we do what is right for the people in this district.”

Hudson released a statement on Wednesday afternoon.

“Last night, the voters of North Carolina’s 9th District made their choice, and I respect it,” it read. “God is sovereign over my life, and He has a plan for all of us.”

“Representing the people of North Carolina has been the honor of my life,” Hudson said. “Since 2013, I’ve worked for North Carolina families. That includes the soldiers and families at Fort Bragg, who sacrifice more for this country than most people will ever know. Every day I had the privilege of being Fort Bragg’s Congressman, I worked to earn that honor.”

Ojeda’s Plans

The new representative-elect has a list of priorities.

“We need to end Citizens United and get big money out of politics,” Ojeda said, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unleashed unlimited political spending from labor unions, corporations, and other organizations.

Ojeda also wants to pass the Protect the Right to Organize Act to “make sure that everybody in this country can unionize,” he said. “Because when you’re unionized, you have people that give you a seat at the table and they fight for safety on the job, they fight for better pay, they fight for better benefits.”

And he wants to revise income tax laws to make a person’s first $45,000 in earnings tax-free.

That benefit would help teachers, bus drivers, nurses, new police officers, firefighters, and other first responders, Ojeda said.

“This would be life changing for them,” he said. “And you know what? They’re going to spend that money locally, and that’s going to boost our local economies.”

The Fort Bragg veteran is about to become Fort Bragg’s new congressman.

Veterans and military families, he said, “are going to be a No. 1 priority for me.”

Representing Bragg in Congress “is probably going to be one of the greatest things that I’ve ever done in my life, and I look forward to getting to work.”

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.