Housing, inequity, the powers of county staff, HB2, education, development and more in our questionnaires for the candidates for the Buncombe County chair and commissioner seats
Above: the Buncombe County Courthouse
Welcome back, readers. We’re in the middle of early voting right now. Today you can vote at eight locations around the county and tomorrow (and almost every day until Nov. 5) you can vote at 20 locations around the county.
There’s a busy year and a lot on the ballot. In our last two pieces, we’ve tried to help with information and tools to make voting early easier and provide a primer on the $74 million bond referendums, a major issue for city voters.
Today we turn our attention to the Buncombe County Commissioners’ races. The commissioners are a key part of local politics, making decisions that affect the lives of 250,000 people. While they sometimes don’t get the same attention as their peers in City Hall, they oversee a larger government, including a $388 million budget, county schools, the sheriff’s office, social services and more.
There are six commissioners and one chair on the seven-member board. The chair is elected countywide, and two commissioners each from District 1 (the center of the county, mostly the city of Asheville), District 2 (the northern and eastern parts of the county) and District 3 the southern and western areas of Buncombe). An overwhelmingly Democratic district, the District 1 race was hard-fought during the primary, but Jasmine Beach-Ferrara faces no opponent in the general election. Republican incumbents in both Districts 2 and 3 are running for re-election, and Chair David Gantt, a Democrat, is not running for another term.
This year’s seen plenty of shake-ups in the race. In May, District 3 Commissioner Miranda DeBruhl, also the Republican Party’s candidate for chair in the race for the seat against District 1 Commissioner Brownie Newman, resigned her seat. She was replaced by former state Rep. Tim Moffitt, putting her seat on the ballot to fill the remaining two years of her term. The local Republican Party chose Robert Pressley and the Democratic Party picked former Commissioner David King (once a Republican, King lost the 2014 primary to DeBruhl) to contest that race. The GOP also picked Chuck Archerd to take DeBruhl’s place in the chair’s contest.
The make-up of the board may also change further. If Newman wins he’ll have to vacate his current seat, leaving the local Democratic Party to pick a replacement.
As for the Blade, after over a month of seeking questions from our readers, we assembled a list of both general and yes/no questions on a wide range of topics and sent them to all the candidates at the same time on Oct. 11, using emails that were either listed as their preferred contact info on their campaign finance filings with the Board of Elections or that we’d used to send questionnaires previously. By Oct. 24, with our deadline approaching, we contacted by phone two Democrats and all four Republican candidates who we had not yet received replies from to help ensure that we could get their responses and resolve any miscommunications.
By that afternoon the remaining two Democrats had submitted their questionnaires. The Republican candidates cited reasons ranging from not receiving the initial email to a time crunch for why they hadn’t done so yet. We re-sent the questionnaire to all who requested it or wanted it sent to a different email.
In an effort to get as many candidates’ responses in our guide as possible, we extended the deadline for those replies by a day and a half and informed candidates of this in a follow-up email. After that, one Republican candidate, as noted below, reached out and offered his apologies for lacking the time to complete the questionnaire.
Unfortunately we are, however, not the only organization facing this issue in trying to bring information about candidates’ stances to the public. Hopefully things will be different in next year’s elections. Obviously, we regret not having replies from all the candidates, but hope that the answers here will still prove informative.
Buncombe County Commissioner Chair
Chuck Archerd — Republican (Candidate did not send responses to the questionnaire, apologizing and citing a lack of time).
Brownie Newman — Democrat
Buncombe County Commissioner, District 1
Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara is running unopposed for this seat.
Buncombe County Commissioner, District 2
Mike Fryar (incumbent) — Republican (Candidate did not send responses to the questionnaire)
Nancy Nehls Nelson — Democrat
Buncombe County Commissioner, District 3
Joe Belcher (incumbent) — Republican (Candidate did not send responses to the questionnaire)
Ed Hay — Democrat
Buncombe County Commissioner, District 3 (term expiring in 2018)
Robert Pressley — Republican (Candidate did not send responses to the questionnaire)
David King – Democrat
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