Foushee's Finances: Pharma, Railroads, and Weapons Companies Pile in for 2026 Campaign

As Rep. Valerie Foushee seeks a third term in Congress, her campaign finance is heavily reliant on corporations and wealthy individuals. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings from the first half of 2025 include donations from pharmaceuticals, private equity, railroads, bankers, weapons, and more [1]. This article is broken into four sections by quarter (Q1 and Q2) and type of donor (individual or PAC). Only contributions of $500 or more are examined.

2025, Q1, Individual Donors

Twenty individuals gave $500 or more to Foushee in the first quarter of 2025. The donors tended to be executives in real estate, private equity, and lobbying. They were often leaders of business associations or civic institutions in the Triangle.

Roger Perry, founder and chairman of East West Partners, donated $3,500. His real estate development company is responsible for major projects in Chapel Hill and Durham such as Meadowmont, East 54, and Village Plaza. Perry was once chairman of the UNC Board of Trustees and was a Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce board member. He won Triangle Business Journal's 'CEO of the Year' in 2017.

Reginald Love gave $2000 to Foushee. He is a senior advisor at Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm. A recent book, Bad Company, documents how Apollo purchased rural hospitals and clinics in Wyoming and then cut staff and services to the bone. Love was a top aide to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011.

Some Foushee donors are DC-based lobbyists. AT&T lobbyist Marc Gonzales gave $1,000. Paul Brathwaite, chief strategist for Federal Street Strategies, donated $500. Brathwaite’s clients include Amazon, Apple, Wells Fargo, AbbVie, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The Hill named him as a top "Hired Gun" every year between 2016 and 2024.

Scott Levitan contributed $500. He is CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation, the non-profit that runs Research Triangle Park (RTP). In 2021, Levitan was selected as the Triangle Business Journal ‘CEO of the Year’. RTP contains 400 companies that employ more than 50,000 workers. He was recently been appointed to the board of the Qatar Science & Technology Park.

Robert Gutman, a pro-Israel activist in the Triangle, contributed to Foushee for Congress PAC. He was a vocal critic of a 2018 resolution by the Durham city council to bar the city’s police from training with the Israeli military. Gutman leads a mostly defunct group called Voice for Israel.

Foushee accepted millions from pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC during her initial run for Congress in 2022. In March 2024, she joined a bipartisan Congressional delegation that visited Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who thanked the “longtime friends of Israel” for their support and discussed his intentions to bomb Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran.

In 2025, Foushee began to distance herself from Israel. She promised to forgo AIPAC donations in her 2026 campaign and she cosponsored Rep. Delia Ramirez’s ‘Block the Bombs’ bill to stop the sale of some weapons to Israel.

2025, Q1, PAC Donors

Between January and March 2025, Foushee took more than 40 PAC contributions of $500 or above. Big Pharma donated more than any other sector, but the FEC reports show a wide range of corporate support. Almost none of the PACs are based in North Carolina.

Seven pharmaceutical companies and lobbying groups gave money to Foushee in Q1. Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck each donated $2,500. Biogen, Novartis, EMD Serono, and the trade association PhRMA all gave $1,000 or more. Foushee does not sit on a House Committee involved in regulating pharmaceutical companies.

Eli Lilly has long been the subject of criticism for the skyrocketing cost of insulin. Over two decades, three companies in control of the insulin market raised the price of the diabetes drug up to 1,500 percent. Eli Lilly and others finally agreed to cut insulin prices due to massive public pressure in 2023 and 2024.

In 2022, the Senate Finance Committee investigated Merck for avoiding billions in US taxes. The probe found that Merck allegedly shifted profits from US sales to offshore subsidiaries to pay an effective tax rate far below the standard rate [2]. 

Foushee took $2,500 from Truist Financial, a bank that has benefitted from strong GOP ties. Back when Sen. Ted Budd was on the House Financial Services Committee, he championed a 2018 law that paved the way for the merger of BB&T and SunTrust, which created Truist. Budd went on to receive favorable loans from the bank as well as campaign donations from Truist executives and lobbyists [3].

Corporations like AT&T, Delta Airlines, Google, and Norfolk Southern each contributed $1,000 to Foushee in the first quarter of 2025. She sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, bodies tasked with regulating these companies.

Norfolk Southern was the railroad company that faced a catastrophic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio in 2023. Before the disaster, the company’s accident rate was rising three times faster than its industry peers [4]. Norfolk Southern uses a cost-cutting doctrine called Precision Scheduled Railroading that relies on running longer trains manned by smaller crews.

In 2019, Norfolk Southern played a significant role in cancelling the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit (DOLRT) project. The proposed route for the light rail crossed existing rail lines operated and maintained by the corporation. Norfolk Southern insisted on changing the planned route, adding $100 million to the project's cost. Despite the concessions, the company (along with Duke University) refused to sign the required cooperative agreements and the DOLRT project could not be pursued.

2025, Q2, Individual Donors

Individuals gave Foushee 15 donations of $500 or more between April and June 2025. The donors included university leaders, prominent attorneys, realtors, and pro-business leaders.

Courtney Crowder is a prominent lobbyist and the North America Director and Chair of Advocacy for APCO Worldwide. He gave $1,000. Crowder is the chair of the Board of Trustees for NC Central University and a board member of Mechanics & Farmers Bank.

Three prominent lawyers wrote checks to Foushee for Congress PAC. Merrick Bertstein, the president and co-founder of K&B Global Consulting and founder of law firm Dragonfly Legal, gave $1,000. So did Brian Crawford, partner at Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, where he specializes in real estate law. John Fountain, a powerful Raleigh attorney, gave $500. Fountain previously served on the Board of Governors of the NC Bar Association and was president of the Raleigh Kiwanis Club.

Two other individuals were linked to real estate. Brett Bushnell donated $500. He is the owner of realty company Compass North Carolina and previously served on the board of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce. Richard Harkrader, builder of innovative ‘Harkrader Homes’ and now CEO of Carolina Solar Energy, gave $2,000 to Foushee. 

Retired EPA researcher Kathy Kaufman gave $1,000. In 2024, Kaufman campaigned to remove a pro-Palestine banner from Peace & Justice Plaza in downtown Chapel Hill. Her story appears in a Jerusalem Post article titled “Jews struggle with how to react to seeing keffiyehs in public” [5].

Former Chapel Hill Town Council member Michael Parker contributed $500 to Foushee. He was an executive at BioAsset Advisors, a consultancy for life sciences firms. Parker also sat on the board of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce.

2025, Q2, PAC Donors

In the second quarter of 2025, Foushee brought in 40 PAC donations of $500 or more. Railroad corporations donated the most to her campaign during this timeframe. Companies owned by centi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Walton family also appear in the FEC records. Foushee also took money from two weapons companies, often called ‘merchants of death’.

Railroad interests gave a total of $7,000. The donors to Foushee from this sector included BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and the Association of American Railroads. BNSF is owned by oligarch Warren Buffett. May 7 is considered ‘Railroad Day’ on Capitol Hill and was especially intense in 2025 because of the potential $85 billion merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. Foushee took money from both sides of the ‘railroad war’. She serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, specifically on the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. 

Trade associations such as the American Bankers Association, American Hospital Association (AHA), and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) each donated $1,000 or more to Foushee. AHA clients include for-profit hospitals, and the lobbying group is officially opposed to Medicare for All. The NAR has called for deregulation and subsidization of private builders to solve the US housing crisis, an approach popularized through ‘Abundance’ messaging.

Foushee for Congress PAC received $1,000 from Blue Origin, a space travel company owned by Jeff Bezos. Walmart donated the same amount. The Walton family has a collective net worth of around $450 billion, while underpaid workers at Walmart are estimated to use around $6 billion of federal benefits each year [x].

Toyota, Nucor, and two lobbying firms also donated in Q2.

The ugliest mark on Foushee’s campaign finance are donations from two major weapons manufacturers. Her PAC took $1,000 each from Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman. The Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza heavily relied on weaponry from both corporations. Lockheed F-16 and F-35 fighter jets were used to drop bombs modified with Lockheed Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits. GBU-39 bombs, which weigh 250 pounds and were widely used in Gaza, are manufactured by Northrup Grumman.

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As Rep. Valerie Foushee prepares for the 2026 elections, her campaign finance is marked by opportunism and immorality. Accepting support from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman make her reversal on AIPAC appear to be just a response to public pressure, rather than genuine opposition to bloodshed abroad.

Foushee’s long list of corporate donors could be a political vulnerability in the ultra-progressive Fourth District. On the other hand, none of the individual donors are particularly notorious, and wouldn't offer much for opponents to criticize. Foushee’s strong support among Triangle business elites will raise leftist eyebrows, but the broader public may simply view these figures as ‘pillars of the community’.

Work Cited

1. Foushee for Congress, 2025-2026. (n.d.). Federal Election Commission. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00794727&two_year_transaction_period=2026

2. Merck avoided billions in U.S. tax by offshoring Keytruda profits - Senator. (2022, July 27). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/merck-avoided-billions-us-tax-by-offshoring-keytruda-profits-senator-2022-07-27/

3. Budd got loans and cash and boosted bank merger — before mass layoffs. (2022, October 18). The Lever. https://www.levernews.com/budd-got-loans-and-cash-and-boosted-bank-merger-before-mass-layoffs/

4. Norfolk Southern’s accident rate spiked over the last decade. (2024, February 29). E&E News by POLITICO. https://www.eenews.net/articles/norfolk-southerns-accident-rate-spiked-over-the-last-decade/

5. Jews struggle with how to react to seeing keffiyehs in public. (2024, November 21). Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-830084

6. Report: Walmart workers cost taxpayers $6.2 billion in public assistance. (2014, April 16). Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/