Orange County voters elect local judges, county commissioners, state lawmakers
Over two-thirds of Orange County voters turned out for the elections this year, choosing state and federal candidates, along with four county commissioners and four District Court judges.
More than 75,000 voters — roughly 67% of Orange County’s registered voters — had cast their ballots before Tuesday, including almost 25,000 absentee ballots, the Orange County elections office said in a news release Monday.
Absentee ballots will continue to be counted until 5 p.m. Nov. 12. The local Board of Elections will certify the final vote count Nov. 13.
The only locally contested race on the ballot in Orange County was for state Senate District 23, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Valerie Foushee defeated Republican Tom Glendenning for another term in office. District 50 Rep. Graig Meyer and District 56 Rep. Verla Insko, both Democrats, ran unopposed for another term in the N.C. House.
No Republican candidates filed to run in local offices either this year, and voters effectively decided the county’s District Court and Board of Commissioners races in the March primary.
That was not unusual for the heavily Democratic county, which rarely fields Republican challengers for local offices. The most recent Republican candidates for county commissioner, Chris Weaver and Mary Carter, won less than 30% of the vote in the 2012 race.
School funding for Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County school systems
A key issue in this year’s commissioners race was education funding and how to pay for aging city and county schools that need millions of dollars in repairs. The board allocates roughly half of the county budget to the two local school districts each year to pay for operations and construction projects. The school boards decide how to spend that money.
In addition to annual school construction funding allocations, the county also is issuing the last of $120 million in voter-approved school bond money this year. However, the city and county school districts estimated earlier this year that critical school building repairs and renovations could cost up to $500 million.
Current and former Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board members Jean Hamilton and Amy Fowler pushed for more money for education and construction in their successful primary campaigns to become county commissioners.
Their opponents — incumbent commissioners Penny Rich, Mark Marcoplos and Mark Dorosin — have questioned how the city school district is handling the money it already has, particularly after a $767,070 professional development agreement came to light late last year. The agreement did not have the school board’s approval or a required state pre-audit certification.
District emails showed the school board heard about work that consultant Education Elements was going to do in June and July 2019, but the cost for that work only came to the board’s attention in late November. Emails obtained by The News & Observer show district officials structured the payments to avoid the $90,000 threshold requiring the board’s approval.
In January, the district canceled the work after paying over $342,000. Superintendent Pam Baldwin resigned in April; her finance director Jennifer Bennett resigned in February.
Last month, an external review found that was not the only instance in which paperwork was not completed or district staff was sloppy in handling big-ticket contracts and purchases over the last five years.
Fowler, who was vice chairwoman of the school board during the controversy, won over 77% of the primary vote in March, defeating her at-large rival Marcoplos.
Hamilton, who was appointed to fill a school board vacancy from May to December 2019, was the top vote-getter in a three-way District 1 primary race. Dorosin defeated Rich, the board’s current chair, by seven votes in a recount for the second District 1 seat.
Rich and Marcoplos will leave the board later this month.
Orange County voters also will seat four District Court judges next year: newcomer Hathaway Pendergrass and incumbents Samantha Cabe, Sherri Murrell and Beverly Scarlett.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 8:00 PM.
