Incumbent Sen. Kevin Corbin will face newcomer Tom Downing in the race for the state Senate District 50 this November.
The two spoke with The Smoky Mountain News to discuss what they consider to be the biggest issues facing constituents this election.
The Senate district covers all of Cherokee, Clay, Macon, Craham, Swain, Jackson and Transylvania counties and most of Haywood County. It has a population of 222,250, according to U.S. Census data.
Downing (D-Jackson), who lives in Cullowhee, will face an uphill battle as he takes on the Macon County born-and-raised Corbin (R-Macon), who has held the seat since 2021, and is heavily favored in the district that favored him with nearly 67% of the vote in the 2024 election.
“I’m a known quantity,” Corbin said. “People know how I work. They’ve seen what I’ve brought back to this district, and I’m running to keep doing that.”
Both candidates were unopposed leading into the primaries, and Downing said he is not satisfied with the status quo of Republican leadership in Western North Carolina.
“I would ask the question of the voters: are they happy with what the Republican party has done to the 50th district?” Downing said.
Both candidates have decades of experience as public servants. Corbin began his political career at age 22 when he was first elected to the Macon County School Board, where he served for 20 years. He later served as a Macon County Commissioner, and in 2017 he was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Downing began his career in the public sector in 2000 as a special education teacher in Wisconsin. In 2005, he moved to North Carolina and worked in Jackson County Public Schools as a special education teacher, reading teacher and substitute bus driver. He left teaching to pursue a master’s degree in public administration from Western Carolina University, after which he found employment in the local government administration with the City of Asheville, where he has worked for the last 15 years.
Corbin said his two highest priorities are Hurricane Helene recovery and education. Downing said his highest priorities are education, affordable housing, childcare, disaster preparedness and resiliency, access to healthcare and broadband connectivity, among other issues.
Education
Both men said education was one of the most important issues in the 50th district, and both have experience in the field, but where they stood on the issues differed.
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Downing is a strong opponent of the school voucher system, which provides state funding to help families pay private school tuition and fees. In 2024, Corbin voted to overturn then-Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto to a mini budget bill that included $463 million for school vouchers.
“We just have to stop siphoning off our tax dollars and giving it to private schools,” Downing said. “You could be a multimillionaire and get about $3,500 to take your kid to private school. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Corbin touts his decades of experience as a member and chair of the Macon County School Board and championing education funding in the latest state budget, such as an 8% raise for teachers (the largest raise in 20 years) and an extra $1.85 million toward the North Carolina Community College system.
In 2026, he was assigned chair of the Appropriations on Education/Higher Education Committee and Education/Higher Education Committee, and he holds appointments in the following six committees: Appropriations on Health and Human Services, Appropriations/Base Budget, Commerce and Insurance, Health Care, State and Local Government and Pensions and Retirement and Aging.
He’s also focused on increasing reading and math proficiency among the state’s K-12 students. Corbin pushed for adding funding for identifying, evaluating and measuring math performance in the latest budget. He said he is less focused on testing and more on seeing students’ proficiency in the subjects increase, which he sees as tied to global competitiveness.
“Getting students on grade level in reading and math is the heart of it,” he said. “If our kids can’t read and do math well, we’re not preparing them for the workforce, the military or college.”
Corbin also emphasized the legislature’s needs-based capital grants, which he said have gone to six of the eight counties in the 50th district to help address school construction and infrastructure with state support supplementing the traditional county responsibility for buildings. For some schools in the district, however, the grants have not been enough to fund the extent of backlogged capital projects, as many rural western counties struggle to meet the requirement for local matching funds.
Downing is interested in making changes to the North Carolina Education Lottery to better support schools.
He believes calling it the “education lottery” is a misnomer, saying the legislature simply swaps lottery dollars in for existing funding rather than adding money for school construction and repairs — leaving local districts with deteriorating facilities and counties that can’t afford major capital projects.
To him, fixing education means both stopping the diversion of public funds and restructuring the tax code so the state actually has the revenue to support its schools, including rethinking flat income taxes and corporate tax cuts that he sees as unfair and fiscally short-sighted.
Hurricane Helene
Corbin’s other top priority focuses on Hurricane Helene recovery. He cited his role as chair of the governor’s recovery committee and recent trips to Washington to keep FEMA money flowing.
Framing expectations, he said, “We’ve made tremendous progress, but this recovery is not a sprint; it’s a marathon, and we can’t just jump in, do things very quickly and be done.” Corbin pointed to roads like Highway 64 and Interstate 40 as examples of routes that are open but not entirely fixed. He noted that lawmakers secured another $700 million in the budget, including $100 million for private roads and bridges, an unprecedented use of state funds for privately owned infrastructure. He stressed that there is more work to be done to fully bounce back and that he is actively working on that recovery.
“All we can do is be as prepared as we possibly can and build back to be more resilient,” he said, pointing to additional funding for water and sewer projects and efforts to protect communities ahead of future storms.
Resiliency is also top of mind for Downing, who said Western North Carolina is “ill-prepared” for the next major disaster and argued that the state and region lack a clear, widely understood plan for how people should get information and respond.
Scientists agree that climate change is increasing the rate and severity of hurricanes and other tropical weather events, making catastrophic flooding like what was seen during Helene more likely.
Beyond education and disaster preparedness, Downing is focusing his campaign on housing, childcare, healthcare access and infrastructure in Western North Carolina. He describes affordable housing and childcare as the “twin sisters” of the district’s economy, arguing that many residents either can’t find childcare or can’t afford to work when the cost of care exceeds their wages.
Downing also pointed to healthcare shortages, particularly the lack of OB/GYN providers in counties like Macon, and warned that cuts to Medicaid and Medicare could further strain rural hospitals. He connected those concerns to broader cost-of-living and infrastructure issues, including Duke Energy rate increases and areas without reliable broadband or cell service, while also calling for the state to prepare for an aging population by building a workforce capable of caring for more residents over 65.
Despite his criticism of the Republican-led legislature, Downing said he wants to run his campaign on unity rather than division, pointing to Corbin’s support for Medicaid expansion and the Jackson County Board of Commissioners’ creation of a special fire taxing district as examples of officials working across differences to address issues facing their communities.
Corbin’s case to voters is that he can deliver on his promises.
“I’m the incumbent, and I think I’ve proven my commitment to Western North Carolina,” he said. “I’ve been very successful at bringing money back to my district and getting things done for my district.”
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