GREENSBORO, N.C. — A North Carolina Democrat who once declared that Trump supporters belong in concentration camps is on the verge of being elected to the state House of Representatives.
Shelly Headen is on track to defeat Republican incumbent Rep. John Blust by a margin of 233 votes in a Guilford County district, according to Breitbart News, which first reported on Headen's post. Provisional ballots are still being tabulated and are expected to pad her lead rather than erase it.
The post at the center of the controversy was a Facebook story published while Headen was visiting the Dachau concentration camp site in Germany. She posed smiling in front of what appears to be the crematorium ovens used by the Nazi SS to burn the bodies of Jews and other prisoners murdered at the camp. The caption, posted above the photo, read: "Visiting Dauchau [sic] Concentration Camp in Germany… This is where Trump supporters belong."
Breitbart reported the image and caption in an earlier story this cycle, and Headen's campaign did not dispute the content of the post. She went on to donate to numerous Democrat campaigns in recent years, including incoming Sen. Roy Cooper and the gubernatorial campaign of Josh Stein, who is Jewish.
Despite the post, the wave of Democrat enthusiasm that swept the state — driven in part by backlash to the Trump administration's deportation operations, which the president himself acknowledged in a Sunday interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" may have been "too tough" — appears set to carry Headen into the General Assembly to represent Guilford County residents. Democrats also won control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, according to coverage of the president's remarks on the results.
There is one potential off-ramp. Headen told the Rhino Times, a conservative online outlet, that she would not take office and would instead allow the county party to choose a replacement. That promise was made before the votes were counted. It is not yet known whether she will follow through. A request for comment from Headen or her campaign was not returned at the time of publication.
The race is not final. County election boards in North Carolina must count provisional ballots and certify results, a process that will play out over the coming days. Republican attorneys are likely to scrutinize the provisional ballot count given the 233-vote margin. Blust, a longtime incumbent, has not publicly conceded.
The Dachau post is not the first time violent rhetoric about Trump supporters has surfaced from a Democrat candidate this cycle — but it is among the most graphic, invoking the machinery of the Holocaust to describe the political opposition. Republicans in Raleigh are already signaling that her seating, if it happens, will become a flashpoint in the 2027 legislative session.
Our Take
Folks, read that caption again. A Democrat running for public office stood in front of the crematorium ovens where the Nazis burned bodies and wrote, with a smile on her face, that this is where Trump supporters belong. Then she donated money to a Jewish gubernatorial candidate and ran as the party of tolerance. The ballots are apparently saying she wins anyway.
This is what the Left has become: a movement that spent years claiming a supposed "ultra-MAGA" threat to democracy while its own candidates joke about gas chambers. Where was the outrage from the legacy media? Where was the Democratic National Committee's condemnation? Crickets — the same silence they offer when any of their own steps out of line, as long as it polls well in a blue county.
Headen's promise to the Rhino Times to step aside is worth exactly as much as every other promise Democrats make to conservative voters: nothing, until proven. Patriots in Guilford County should demand she honor it. If she does not, every Republican in the General Assembly should refuse to seat her, and every voter in that district should remember the name Shelly Headen, the smile, and the ovens come the next election.
The Republican Party's job here is simple: make sure this story is told in every ad, in every district, until the 233-vote margin is reversed by provisional ballots or Headen keeps her word. This is not politics as usual. This is a test of whether a person who praised the Holocaust can hold a seat of power in North Carolina — and right now, the answer on the ballot is yes.
