A Bangladeshi-origin lawyer, Haseeb Fatmi, has won a seat in the North Carolina state legislature in the United States, securing a full term after being appointed to a vacant seat last May.
The Democrat candidate won the 18th seat of the State Senate in the election held on 3 November. According to published unofficial results, he received 54.77 per cent of the vote, a press release said on Sunday. His main rival, Republican Chris Stock, received 42.79 per cent. Libertarian candidate Brad Hessel was also in the race.
Fatmi took charge of the State Senate after being appointed to the vacant seat last May. This time he won the direct election, giving him the opportunity to serve a full term.
The district encompasses all of Granville County and northern Wake County. Democrat Terrence Everitt won the seat by just 128 votes in the 2024 election. This time Fatmi kept it in Democratic hands, receiving nearly 12 percentage points more than Stock.
Fatmi, 38, hails from Noakhali in Bangladesh. His father, Mohammad Badrul Ehsan Fatmi, and mother, Saida Fatmi Snigdha, immigrated to the US from Bangladesh in 1973. Fatmi was born in Durham, North Carolina, in 1988.
His mother worked as a kindergarten assistant teacher in Wake County Public Schools, and Fatmi also attended public schools there. He studied political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated in 2009 from Fordham University in New York, where he earned a law degree in 2012. He has particularly highlighted the role of the public education system in advancing his life.
