Mark Walker

All North Carolina incumbents retained their seats; in the 6th district, Walker received 59% of the vote.

Neither Walker nor Glidewell won their home county in the election.

Bradley Mark Walker (born May 20, 1969) is an American politician and pastor who served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 6th congressional district from 2015 to 2021.

Walker was born on May 20, 1969, in Dothan, Alabama.

Walker eventually attended Trinity Baptist College for a time before moving with his family to Houston, Texas.

From there, Walker moved to the Piedmont Triad.

He worked in business and finance for several years.

Walker eventually returned to college to pursue the ministry and attend Piedmont Baptist College, now Carolina University, graduating with a B.A. in biblical studies.

Walker was ordained in the Southern Baptist denomination.

His career in ministry began at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem.

He has worked for and led churches in North Carolina and Florida.

He has served as a worship pastor, executive pastor and lead pastor.

Republican Howard Coble had represented the 6th district since 1985 when he announced his retirement at age 83.

Coble supported Phil Berger Jr.. in the May primary election and Walker finished second, though in the runoff election, Walker unexpectedly won 57%–44%.

Most of Walker's election funding came from individual contributions, which he noted in his primary victory speech.

In the general election, Walker defeated Democratic attorney Laura Fjeld of Hillsborough.

"I certainly do align with the Republican Party when it comes to traditional values," Walker said after the election, "but even so, limited government is my heart and my nature and I think that says a lot about North Carolina and maybe we are still more red than purple."

He said that in his term he hoped to address poverty, immigration, and education issues.

In 2008, Walker started with Lawndale Baptist Church in Greensboro as its pastor of arts and worship.

The church has a membership of several thousand congregants.

Based on 2010-2016 election data, plaintiffs in Harper v. Lewis estimated that Hillary Clinton would have carried the redrawn 6th with 59 percent of the vote had it existed in 2016 –a mirror image of Donald Trump's 56 percent margin in the old 6th.

Walker significantly outspent his opponent, Democrat Pete Glidewell, in the 2016 campaign; Walker's $818,000, about 40% from national political action committees (PACs), was nine times what Glidewell had fundraised.

During the 2016 presidential election, Walker called some of Republican nominee Donald Trump's remarks "morally reprehensible" and condemned Trump's lewd remarks about women as "vile."

Nevertheless, Walker still backed Trump over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

After the election, Walker expressed support for incoming president Trump on the issues of taxes and education, but said he could not stand behind Trump's statements about a registry tracking Muslim Americans.

A member of the Republican Party, he was elected to head the Republican Study Committee in 2017 and vice chair of the House Republican Conference in 2019.

Walker unsuccessfully ran for Senate in the 2022 election, placing third in the Republican primary.

Walker briefly was a candidate in the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial election before withdrawing to run for his old House seat.

Walker faced no primary challenger in 2018.

On April 20, Walker's campaign raised $650,000 during a luncheon attended by Vice President Mike Pence, the largest sum in U.S. House history, effectively doubling what Walker had previously raised.

In the general election, he defeated Democrat Ryan Watts of Burlington by about 13 percentage points.

In June 2019, Walker decided against challenging Senator Thom Tillis in 2020, reportedly giving relief to Republican leaders who feared a bitter primary would hurt their prospects of retaining a U.S. Senate majority.

In November 2019, at the urging of a three-judge panel of the state Superior Court hearing the case Harper v Lewis, the North Carolina General Assembly adopted on a party-line vote (with Republicans prevailing) a new U.S. congressional district map for the state that substantially changed Walker's district.

The old 6th covered Rockingham, Caswell, Person, Alamance, Randolph, Chatham and Lee counties and northern and eastern Guilford County.

The new 6th was a much more compact district covering all of Guilford County and extending west into Forsyth County, including almost all of Winston-Salem.

The change dramatically shifted the 6th's partisan balance.

In December 2019, Walker announced that he will not run for re-election in 2020.

This led political observers to suggest that Walker's seat would likely be a Democratic pick-up in 2020.

Walker's seat was one of two Republican-held seats that swung heavily to the Democrats as a result of the new map.

Indeed, on paper the new 6th was one of the most Democratic white-majority districts in the South.