State House battles to highlight 2020 election year
Five contests loom for Dare Commissioners, Ed Board
A flurry of eleventh-hour filings has left Dare County voters with a pretty full ballot of candidates to choose from in the upcoming 2020 elections. The filing period for those who want to run in the 2020 election cycle ended on Friday, Dec. 20.
With four seats of the seven seats in play on both the Dare County Board of Commissioners and the Dare County Board of Education, a total of three incumbents will run unopposed next year.
On the Dare Board of Commissioners, those incumbents are District 1 Representative and Board Vice-chair Wally Overman, a Republican, as well as District 4 Democrat Danny Couch.
The Dare County Board of Education member who does not have either a primary or general election opponent is District 4 incumbent, Mary Ellon Ballance, who is a Republican. Two of the three unchallenged incumbents, Couch and Ballance, represent Hatteras.
Elsewhere on the board of commissioners, Republican Bob Woodard, a District 2 representative and the board chair, will face a general election race against Kill Devil Hills Democrat Amanda Hooper Walters.
Steve House, the incumbent Republican commissioner from District 3, will have to fend off primary and general election challengers. In the GOP primary, he will compete against Kitty Hawk resident Paul Wright, with the winner of that contest to face Democrat Kathy McCullough-Testa of Southern Shores
On the school board, with the elections now conducted as partisan contests, the battle for the at-large seat will feature Republican incumbent David Twiddy and Democratic challenger Charles Parker of Kill Devil Hills.
In District 1, Board of Education Chair and incumbent Democrat Bea Basnight has a Republican general election challenger in Carl Woody II of Manteo.
Several candidates are running for the District 2 that had been occupied by Ben Sproul, who was elected mayor of Kill Devil Hills in November. Kill Devil Hills resident Jen Alexander, who lost a competitive school board race to incumbent Joe Tauber in 2018, is running on the Democratic side while Susan Bothwell of Nags Head is competing as a Republican.
There will also be competitive races for the N.C. House and N.C. Senate seats that represent Dare County in Raleigh.
The District 1 N.C. Senate incumbent, Republican Bob Steinburg of Edenton, will not face a primary opponent as he did two years ago. But he is being challenged in the general election by Kitty Hawk Democrat Tess Judge.
Judge — the wife of longtime Dare Commissioner Warren Judge, who died during his 2016 N.C. House race against Beverly Boswell—ran unsuccessfully in 2018 against Republican and Powells Point resident Bobby Hanig for that same District 6 House seat.
As for Hanig, the first-term District 6 incumbent will face primary and general election races in 2020. He has a primary challenge from Republican Kill Devil Hills resident Rob Rollason. The winner of that contest will then battle Southern Shores resident and Democrat Tommy Fulcher.
