On May 6, 2026, the congressman in charge of getting House Republicans re-elected sat down for a podcast and was asked a simple question: aren't you worried that Democrats are going to run on the cost of living?

Richard Hudson said no.

"I'm not worried at all because voters remember that we had $9 gas in some places and we've now brought prices down."

That is two claims in one sentence. Both of them are false.

Nobody in America ever paid $9 for a gallon of gas

There is no version of this that's true.

The highest national average gas price ever recorded was $5.016 a gallon, on June 14, 2022. That was the record. AAA said so at the time, and it was national news precisely because crossing $5 was unprecedented. The federal government's own weekly numbers put the peak at $5.006 the day before.

In North Carolina — the state Hudson actually represents — the all-time record for a gallon of regular is $4.67, set on June 13, 2022. That's AAA's own number for his state. Not $9. Not close to $9. Barely half of $9.

The closest anything ever came was a single gas station. In June 2022, an independent repair shop in Mendocino, California was charging $9.60 a gallon — the most expensive gas in the country by about three dollars, and a story only because it was so absurd. The owner explained why: she's a one-pump independent, she buys her fuel wholesale from Chevron, and she doesn't sell snacks or drinks to make up the margin. The county average around her was $6.38.

So when the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee tells voters they "remember" $9 gas, what he is describing is one pump in a coastal California town of about 900 people, roughly 3,000 miles from Charlotte. That's the entire basis for "in some places."

And prices weren't down. They were up 59 percent.

The second half of the sentence is worse, because it's checkable against the week he said it.

Here is what a gallon of regular gas cost nationally, from the Energy Information Administration's weekly series:

Hudson said "we've now brought prices down" two days after the national average hit $4.45 — up 59 percent in four months. Prices hadn't come down. They had gone up faster than in any stretch since 2022.

They're still up. As of today, the national average is about $4.01 and North Carolina's is $3.67 — compared to $2.88 in North Carolina a year ago. That's an 80-cent-a-gallon increase in twelve months.

Diesel is the part nobody in Washington talks about and every farmer, trucker and school district in the 9th District feels. North Carolina diesel is $5.22 a gallon right now, against $3.51 a year ago — a 49 percent jump. And on April 7, 2026, North Carolina diesel hit $5.81 a gallon: the highest price ever recorded in the state's history. Not in 2022. Not under Biden. This April.

Every gallon of that moves through the price of groceries, building materials, and everything else that arrives on a truck.

He used to think this was the most important issue in America

Hudson's position that voters aren't going to care about fuel prices is new. Four years ago, he built newsletters around them.

In January 2023, he sent his constituents an email titled "Have you filled up lately?" It opened: "Like my family, I'm sure you have noticed that prices are only going one way. In fact, in North Carolina, average gas prices have increased more than 45 cents per gallon in the past month." He told them families "have suffered for too long and paid too high a price."

North Carolina gas is up 80 cents a gallon over the past year. That is nearly double the increase he called suffering. His response now is that he is "not worried at all."

He was also very clear, back then, that world events were no excuse. In April 2022, he put out a statement attacking Democrats for blaming anything other than themselves:

"For the past year, President Biden and Washington Democrats have tried shifting blame for skyrocketing gas prices at the pump to everyone but themselves — First COVID-19, then Vladimir Putin, and now oil companies. The American people are smarter than that."

In the same interview where he told voters not to worry, NOTUS reported, Hudson said voters understand why gas prices have risen amid the fighting in Iran.

The rule he wrote for Democrats — you don't get to blame a war overseas — apparently expired the moment his own party was in charge. He has voted repeatedly to keep that war going, which is a pattern we've documented in other districts: Ashley Hinson took $64,500 from oil and gas companies and voted six times against ending the war driving prices up.

Hudson's habit of overstating this stuff is documented. In January 2023, PolitiFact rated his claim that "Joe Biden's war on American energy caused this crisis" Mostly False, finding it inaccurate to say Biden alone caused an energy crisis or that his administration had done nothing about prices.

This isn't one guy freelancing. It's the party's message.

Hudson isn't a backbencher who misspoke on a podcast. He is the chairman of the NRCC — the organization that raises the money, recruits the candidates, and writes the talking points for every House Republican running in November. When he says "we're still on a rescue mission" and tells his members to be more specific about how good the 2025 budget bill was, that's not commentary. That's the script.

He knows the script isn't landing. In the same interview he admitted: "We haven't done a good job with it. We've tried to really talk about the things that are affecting people's pocketbooks because that's the top issue on voters' minds right now."

His answer to the top issue on voters' minds is a number that never existed.

He's not the only one doing this. Three months later, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told Fox Business that eggs cost 78 cents and milk was under $2 — when federal data had eggs at $2.14 a dozen and milk at $4.32 a gallon. Two of the most powerful Republicans in the House, both telling Americans that what they see at the register isn't real.

What it actually costs North Carolina

Hudson has represented the 9th District since 2013 — thirteen years. His district runs from the Charlotte suburbs down through Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, and it is full of the people who eat fuel prices first: soldiers commuting to post, small farmers, contractors, and anyone driving to a job that doesn't pay mileage.

On tariffs — the other thing pushing prices up — Hudson has told his own party that Trump's tariffs are a "net plus" heading into the midterms. Not a hard call, not a necessary sacrifice. A political asset.

And this all sits on top of the bill he voted for. North Carolina stands to lose $49.9 billion in Medicaid and its farmers face roughly a third of their income wiped out — we laid out the full tally, and who voted for it, here.

When the man running the House Republican campaign gets asked whether he's worried that people can't afford their lives, the honest answer would have been some version of: yes, and here's what we're doing about it. What he said instead was that we all remember $9 gas.

We don't. It never happened.

Source

NRCC Chair 'Not Worried' About Democrats Running on High Prices — Ed Demaria, NOTUS, May 6, 2026. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images.