North Carolina candidate in battleground race penalized for betting on her campaign

Daniela Altimari, CQ-Roll Call on Aug 31, 2026

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WASHINGTON — A Republican seeking to flip a key battleground district in North Carolina has been fined and suspended by the prediction market Kalshi after she bet on her campaign.

Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army colonel running against Democratic Rep. Don Davis, will pay a $25,000 fine and is suspended from the platform for three years.

“I bet on myself. Literally,’’ Buckhout said in a statement Monday. “It was a dumb mistake, and as soon as I learned there was an issue, I worked to make it right. Safe to say my career as a Kalshi trader was short-lived.”

Kalshi banned political candidates from trading on their own campaigns under new rules pushed through in March amid scrutiny of prediction markets from Congress.

Buckhout is making her second run for North Carolina’s 1st District after narrowly losing to Davis in 2024. Since then, Republicans in the state legislature have redrawn the northeastern North Carolina district, transforming it from one that backed Donald Trump in 2024 by 3 points to one he would have carried by 12 points, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

Davis took to social media Monday afternoon to criticize Buckhout for her bet.

“The news that my opponent was caught, fined, and slapped with a three-year ban for trading on insider information is a disqualifying breach of public trust,’’ the second-term Democrat wrote.

The race for the 1st District is among two House contests in North Carolina rated as competitive by Inside Elections; the other is the open 11th District in the state’s western region. Inside Elections rates both races Lean Republican.

Buckhout is among several candidates cited by Kalshi for wagering on their own campaigns. Also Monday, the platform fined and suspended a pair of former gubernatorial hopefuls: former Planet Fitness President Ben Midgley, who sought the Republican nomination in Maine, and former timeshare mogul Stephen Cloobeck, who ended his campaign for California governor last fall.

Earlier this year, the company penalized Mark Moran, an independent who was running for Senate from Virginia; Republican Ezekiel Enriquez, who ran for the House from Texas; and Matt Klein, a Democratic state senator who sought a House seat in Minnesota. Enriquez and Klein lost their primaries, while Moran dropped his Senate bid in June.

Meanwhile, Kalshi disclosed Monday that it had permanently banned former New York Rep. George Santos from the platform, saying it had “reasonable cause to believe that George Santos engaged in trading activity in certain markets related to his attendance at the State of the Union address.” The former GOP congressman was also fined more than $71,000.

Santos was expelled from the House in 2023 after an ethics report detailed how he spent thousands of dollars from campaign funds on purchases at Ferragamo, Atlantic City resorts and Hermes and for Botox treatments and to pay his debts.