On October 11, a process server showed up at a campaign rally in Polk County, North Carolina, and handed a criminal summons to a congressional candidate. The charge: a Class H felony for willfully failing to return a rented 2019 Toyota Corolla valued at $20,000 from Budget Car Rental.
Three weeks later, that candidate won.
Democrat LaKesha Womack defeated Republican incumbent Tim Moore in North Carolina's 14th Congressional District with 51.1% of the vote to Moore's 48.9% — a margin of roughly 6,415 votes out of more than 288,000 cast. Moore, the former longtime Speaker of the North Carolina House, first won the congressional seat in 2024. As reported by the Gateway Pundit, Womack is now a congresswoman-elect with a court date.
That court date is November 10 — one day from now.
The felony stems from a rental car Womack was supposed to return by October 13, 2019. She didn't. A criminal summons was originally issued in January 2020. It came back unserved in February 2020 because Womack had no stable address. The summons was reissued and finally served at her own campaign rally more than six years later.
Womack has acknowledged the basics. "At one point, I had a rental car, and I did not return the rental car on time," she said. She explained that she was homeless at the time and had a young son. She's also claimed she suffered a medical emergency requiring hospitalization around the period in question. When pressed for details by reporters, she pivoted: "I can't talk about that because it is an ongoing legal case."
Under North Carolina law, willfully failing to return a hired motor vehicle valued above $4,000 is a Class H felony — carrying a potential prison sentence of more than two years depending on criminal history and sentencing factors. The Corolla was valued at five times that threshold.
Womack raised roughly $56,000 for her campaign. She was a first-time candidate running against a former House Speaker in a district that wasn't supposed to flip. The felony charge, served at her own rally in front of supporters, didn't slow her down. It arguably didn't even register with most voters.
Moore's loss is its own story — a powerful Republican incumbent losing a district he'd held for two years to an underfunded challenger with an active felony case. The 14th District covers a stretch of western North Carolina that Moore was supposed to hold comfortably.
The party that spent two years chanting "no one is above the law" during every Trump indictment just sent a woman to Congress who has to appear before a judge the week after Election Day. The charge isn't from decades ago. The summons wasn't served in some distant jurisdiction. It was handed to her at her own campaign event, in her own district, 24 days before voters went to the polls.
November 10. Courtroom. The Honorable Congresswoman-elect.