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Republican Congressman David Rouzer played a notable role at our recent candidates' forum, even though he wasn’t actually there.
At the top of the hour-long event, Libertarian Maad Abu-Ghazalah saved some of the 90 seconds allotted for opening statements to speak on behalf of Rouzer. He got up from his own chair and sat in the empty spot we’d reserved for the incumbent. Our emcee, the veteran news anchor Jon Evans, raised an eyebrow but didn’t interrupt.
“So, my name is David Rouzer,” Abu-Ghazalah said, sitting behind Rouzer’s nametag. “I know none of you have really heard my voice before, so this is what I sound like. But you can call me Casper because nobody's seen me in over two years.”
We’d reached out to candidates in July, and by early August Abu-Ghazalah and Democrat Dr. Kimberly Hardy had confirmed. Rouzer’s office told us they were ‘working on it,’ up until the week before the event. At that point, for security reasons, we needed a yes or no, and Rouzer’s team said he wouldn’t be available — though they didn’t respond to a follow-up question about why. Rouzer also declined to respond to our candidate questionnaire (which we use to help build the forum), as opposed to some other candidates who had scheduling conflicts but still responded to our written questions.
Throughout the forum, Abu-Ghazalah and Hardy riffed on Rouzer’s absence, and seemed to genuinely appreciate each other for showing up and answering questions — even if they diverged on their policy preferences.
Hardy has an uphill battle in the comfortably Republican NC-7 district and, by his own tacit admission — “I told my mom I’d get five votes,” he joked at our forum — Abu-Ghazalah does not have a realistic chance of usurping Rouzer’s seat. So, you could dismiss their comments as bluster or sour grapes. But, as Abu-Ghazalah noted in his closing remarks, the issue wasn’t that Rouzer skipped this event; it’s that he’s avoided public events almost entirely.
“I know you're watching us,” Abu-Ghazalah said, addressing Rouzer. “Show up. How hard is it? We have one big debate a year or every two years. I heard you haven't showed up ever to one of these things.”
Then, he polled the crowd.
“How many people show of hands? How many people even know what the guy's voice sounds like? Anybody hear his voice?” he asked. “Let the record show: Two people.”
I can confirm, two people raised their hands. I was one of them.
***
I first met David Rouzer in November 2016 at a Trump rally, held at the Wilmington airport on the Saturday before Election Day. Organizers had penned the press into a small area around a metal platform in a hangar, surrounded by the crowd, which spilled out onto the tarmac.
While we waited for Trump’s airplane to land and taxi up to the hangar, I left the press area and walked through the crowd, talking to attendees. In general, people were not as hostile to the press as one might imagine, given Trump’s open derision of the media. It might have helped that, though I did have a press pass around my neck and my go-to black polo shirt, I also had visible tattoos and, at the time, long hair. I recall clearly one attendee told me, “You don’t look like an elitist asshole,” before chatting with me about his support for Trump.
Working through the crowd, I ran into Rouzer and briefly interviewed him. He was pleasant and asked about my then-new gig at Port City Daily and what stories I was working on. I asked him about ‘Repeal and Replace,’ the ambitious plan to unwind the Affordable Care Act and pass new legislation to deliver better health insurance options to Americans. (As someone whose Obamacare premiums had just tripled when I left my kitchen job for a just-slightly-higher-paying reporter position, I understood the benefits of the ACA as well as the criticisms — but, of course, efforts to replace it with a better plan never came to anything.)
Rouzer seemed very confident that he’d win a second term over Democrat J. Wesley Casteen (and, indeed, he took roughly 61% of the vote), and said he looked forward to talking more about the ACA and other issues after the election.
***
A few months later, my editor sent me to cover Rouzer’s town hall, which he held at Brunswick County Community College. It was mid-afternoon on a Monday, but while some complained the event conflicted with working hours, there was a sizable — and “rowdy,” as Evans wrote for WECT — crowd.
I’d been assigned to ‘live Tweet’ the event (which was a thing, back then), so I have a kind of stream-of-consciousness record of the town hall.
Over two hours, Rouzer took pointed questions about the ACA, abortion, education, immigration, and Trump’s policies in the early part of his first year in office. The organizers used a raffle system to manage the crowd, although sometimes that system gave way to chanting, occasionally drowning out Rouzer’s attempt to respond to questions — especially on hot-button topics. At one point, responding to a question about climate change, Rouzer argued that “the scientific community is split” — a falsehood that prompted some attendees to walk out.
By and large, Rouzer stuck to his guns. He said he wanted to defund Planned Parenthood, roll back the EPA (claiming more government would not make people safer), and dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. He described Trump’s immigration policy as “going after the rapists, the murderers” and defended the administration’s travel restriction, saying it was “not a Muslim ban.”
Asked about Trump’s attacks on the press, Rouzer backed the president’s criticism, leading to this Tweet:
Rouzer: “The press is not fair and objective.” Resounding boos. Awkward looks in the press booth.
Rouzer deferred questions about Trump and Russia to the House and Senate intelligence committees. When a question about whether he would disagree with Trump on anything turned into shouts of “answer the question” from the crowd, things got heated. Someone shouted, “I’d have more respect for you if you said ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Rouzer didn’t answer — but he didn’t lose his cool, either, saying, “I think the crowd is doing a very good job.” After one particular crowd outburst, someone shouted, “Are you feeling like this is going well?” Rouzer responded, “This is fine. This is great.”
Despite the rowdy moments, Rouzer stayed until the end. He told the crowd he appreciated them. “I hear you. We disagree on some things, obviously. But I do hear you,” he said.
I’d been to rallies and protests before, seen politicians and activists preaching to the choir, and I’d seen plenty of debates, some pugilistic. But I’d never really seen someone stand in front of an essentially hostile audience before, not for any length of time like this, anyway. “What a shellacking,” I remember a fellow reporter saying.
I won’t pretend that I agreed with a lot of Rouzer’s policy positions but, as a journalist, the event struck me like an earnest engagement with his constituents — properly speaking, democracy. He’d told the crowd that he would remain accessible as long as he was in office, and, at the time, it seemed like he was willing to prove it.
It was March 6, 2017. Best I can tell, it was the last town hall Rouzer ever held.
***
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I’d hoped until the last minute that Rouzer would show up to our forum. Having interviewed him a couple of times since I came to WHQR, I found him civil and open to tough questions (regardless of how some folks might feel about his answers). But, over the years, he’s withdrawn from the press and the public. He sat for campaign interviews with Rachel Lewis Hilburn’s Coastline on WHQR several times between 2016 and 2020; I spoke with him after January 6, for the 2022 primary, and a few other times. But in the 2024 general and 2026 primary, his team didn’t respond to interview requests. On issues involving his office, his team has not responded either. His public-facing office in the old New Hanover County government center is long gone; his staff now lead ‘mobile office hours,’ which is not the same, many would argue, as seeing your Congressional rep in person.
I can only speculate about Rouzer's motive. Perhaps he feels, as he said almost a decade ago, that the press is unfair; I would grant that in some cases. But it also seems that he feels he owes no answers to constituents — and voters — which is harder to justify.
I’m grateful that Rouzer is an exception, not the rule, with our region’s candidates. Most candidates — Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians — showed up, including all those running for New Hanover County’s school board and board of commissioners, as well as the state House and Senate races covering the county. These are not mild-mannered affairs; they can be tough, with hard questions. One candidate told me it was a ‘crucible’ — and I think that’s right. The forums' primary purpose, of course, is to inform the public. But a knock-on benefit is that it sharpens candidates up, or reveals where they’re dull.
Now, we know most candidates have busy lives, and that campaign season can mean showing up to a lot of events. That’s part of the reason that, over the last four years or so, WHQR has worked with Port City Daily and WECT (and, starting this year, UNCW’s The Seahawk) — to cut down on duplication of efforts, for both the press and candidates.
Still, not every candidate can make it. Some, like Brunswick County Commissioner candidates Randy Thompson and Patti Hewett and House District 19 incumbent Charlie Miller — all Republicans — filled out our questionnaires but didn’t come to our forum. At the least, voters can get a baseline on where they stand on some issues, but it means their Democratic opponents — Gary Woods, Sara Singer, and Scott Nasiff, respectively — had opportunities to deliver unanswered criticism before a live and online audience. Will that make a difference, especially in ruby-red Brunswick County? We’ll see.
In House District 17, meanwhile, Republican representative Frank Iler showed up alongside Democratic challenger Dennis Breen and was seemingly more than game for pointed audience questions. Certainly some in the audience disliked his answers — but you can’t accuse him of hiding. At the end of the event, he tipped his hat to Jon Evans, and called it a “great forum.”
And then there’s Bill Rabon, the longtime Republican State Senator from District 8, who has never agreed to come to one of our forums or responded to our questionnaires, that I’m aware of (he seems to have ducked other outlets, too). He faces two challengers, Libertarian Tim White and Democrat Richard Combes, who both noted Rabon’s absence during our forum this week. As White put it in his closing remarks, echoing Abu-Ghazalah, “I’m not Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
Rabon, like Rouzer, seems safely ensconced in a heavily Republican district — although you can never be 100% sure. I suspect Rabon has long since attended his last forum. And unless voters — regardless of party — demand otherwise, I think we’ve already seen David Rouzer’s last town hall.
