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Ashley Ward
Ashley Ward (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent North Carolina's 4th Congressional District. She lost in the Democratic primary on May 17, 2022.
Ward completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Ashley Ward was born in Durham, North Carolina. Ward earned a bachelor's degree, a graduate degree, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003, 2005, and 2012, respectively. Her career experience includes working as a senior policy associate for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and as the climate-health lead for the NOAA RISA program for the Carolinas.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: North Carolina's 4th Congressional District election, 2022
North Carolina's 4th Congressional District election, 2022 (May 17 Democratic primary)
North Carolina's 4th Congressional District election, 2022 (May 17 Republican primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House North Carolina District 4
Valerie Foushee defeated Courtney Geels in the general election for U.S. House North Carolina District 4 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Valerie Foushee (D) | 66.9 | 194,983 |
 | Courtney Geels (R)  | 33.1 | 96,442 | |
| Total votes: 291,425 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 4
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 4 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Valerie Foushee | 46.1 | 40,806 |
 | Nida Allam | 37.0 | 32,731 | |
 | Clay Aiken | 7.4 | 6,529 | |
 | Ashley Ward | 5.4 | 4,767 | |
 | Richard Watkins | 1.3 | 1,155 | |
 | Crystal Cavalier | 1.3 | 1,116 | |
 | Stephen J. Valentine | 1.2 | 1,023 | |
| Matt Grooms | 0.5 | 435 | ||
| Total votes: 88,562 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 4
Courtney Geels defeated Robert Thomas in the Republican primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 4 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Courtney Geels | 64.5 | 19,645 |
 | Robert Thomas | 35.5 | 10,793 | |
| Total votes: 30,438 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- John Szoka (R)
- Rene Borghese (R)
- Nat Robertson (R)
- Craig Kinsey (R)
- Erik Fredsell (R)
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Ashley Ward completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Ward's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- There is no greater threat to the health and wellness of people in the U.S. than climate change. As an expert in this field who has worked at the community level for a decade, I understand what policies are needed to address this issue.
- Democracy is eroding. We must secure voting rights. Full stop.
- Small businesses are the backbone of communities, particularly rural and small urban communities. We must create a tax structure that supports small businesses, along with other policies, such as affordable healthcare and access to capital, that ensure their success.
Democracy is eroding. We must stop the wave of anti-voting legislation to ensure equal access to voting for all citizens.
Public officials should not use their positions for personal gain. We've learned that what we thought were laws governing the conduct of public officials are instead norms that are easily broken.
Ensuring affordable healthcare is a must. Failure to do so is a reflection on our values that prioritize corporate profits over the well being of our citizens.
We are seeing a large exodus from trades, leaving a critical shortage in skilled tradespeople at the same time that we face a looming student debt crisis. We must ensure affordable higher education and support the development of vocational programs through the community colleges.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Ward's campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Climate Change There is no greater threat to the health and wellness of people in the Southeast than climate change. The next few years are a defining moment for us. Will we rise to the challenge to create a sustainable, climate-resilient America? In order to do this, we need experts in Congress who have worked at the community level and understand the urgent need to better understand climate vulnerability and to create policies that improve preparedness and limit the health impacts on the region's population. We must act on the framework created in the Green New Deal that puts health, well-being, and equity at the center of our climate policy. To do this, we must create actionable policies that confront the crisis of climate change, create policies based on regional impacts from climate change, particularly those associated with health; end reliance on and subsidies to fossil fuels; restructure the federal Flood Insurance Program; update occupational regulations to protect workers from the impacts of climate extremes; support a just transition by building economies that rely less on extraction and more on investment.
Public officials should have a servant's heart. They should not use their positions for personal gain. We've learned that what we thought were laws governing the conduct of public officials are instead norms that are easily broken. Laws governing the behavior of public officials either do not exist or are not being fully enforced. We must strengthen our anti-corruption policies, restrict the influence of corporations in politics, dismantle the Congress to lobby pipeline, reform campaign finance.
Democracy is eroding. Unfortunately, too many citizens today have lost faith in their government. Citizens believe that once people get elected, their only concern is how to stay in office rather than how they can serve the public. Even popular legislation is held up because of partisan politics. Because laws are being passed that prevent citizens from exercising their right to vote, legislators are not accountable to those they represent, and are unwilling to legislate based on their community's best interests. We must end gerrymandering, allow automatic voter registration, preserve early voting, build robust mail-in voting systems, and create a national voting holiday.
Providing safe, affordable healthcare is more than a policy decision, it is a demonstration of our values. My family has suffered under the weight of large medical bills. We’ve made tough decisions between buying what we need and paying medical bills. We have a moral imperative to address the inequities and expense of our healthcare system so we can ensure the well-being of all Americans.
We are seeing a large exodus from trades, leaving a critical shortage in skilled tradespeople. This is compounded by an emphasis in public schools that push students toward four-year colleges. With the costs of education rising, a four-year degree is becoming more and more unreachable. And those that do earn their degrees graduate with crippling debt. We must remove the stigma associated with community colleges and trade work; support community colleges and apprenticeship programs; restructure federal student loan programs; ensure affordable access to education
Small businesses are the backbone of communities, particularly rural and small urban communities. They provide opportunities and growth, making up more than 50% of the share of jobs in all communities; however, we've seen the rate of new business creation fall overall in the past years and greater rates of small business closures. We must restructure the tax code to support small businesses not just large corporations; provide access to capital and extend the payment time horizons; provide affordable, universal healthcare to reduce the expense burden on small businesses.
Many state and local data systems were developed during the late 1990s or early 2000s and are not equipped to fully capitalize on major data investments or available technologies. Additionally the digital divide between rural and urban regions remains a considerable barrier to opportunity and growth, and the cost of access to the Internet is prohibitive to many families. We must invest in data modernization for public agencies at the state and local levels, ensure access to affordable Internet service, and expand broadband services to rural areas.[2] |
” |
| —Ashley Ward's campaign website (2022)[3] | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on November 22, 2021
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Ashley Ward for Congress, “Priorities,” accessed April 22, 2022
