It’s Labor Day weekend, so it’s time for the November election season to take the stage. We’re going to take our first look at Halifax County’s election slate now.
We’re going to focus on county races here. We’ve got five out of the eight election districts electing School Board & Board of Supervisor positions. Constitutional offices are up as well as some special elections to fill vacant positions. We’ll start with the Board of Supervisors races.
Five districts on the board, but three of them are uncontested. Let’s dispense with those first.
District 4: Bye-bye, Doug Bowman. Once Bowman’s coalition lost their majority on the board of Supervisors, Bowman lost his power. Temper tantrums erupted and dysfunctional antics ensued. Bowman claimed it was his plan to not run for reelection, but the voters would have probably done that for him anyway had he ran. Dennis Witt ended up being the only candidate to enter the race, so that happened.
District 7: Lottie Nunn’s not running for reelection and Garland Ricketts was the only person to run. This will set up an interesting question once he takes office… who replaces him on the Industrial Development Authority’s board of directors? If the 2016 Board of Supervisors wants to put real pressure on IDA Director Matt Leonard, this vacancy is the perfect way for that to happen.
District 8: Bryant Claiborne did a masterful job of forming his coalition and keeping it together, knocking Team Bowman out of power. Claiborne would have easily been SAFE even he if had drawn a challenger, but the one person who said she was going to run just faded out.
Now let’s move to the two contested districts.
District 1: J.T. Davis might have thrown his last writing instrument, because he’s got an opponent with the last name of Abbott this time. Davis was part of the tempter-tantrum Team Bowman and quickly built up public discontent during the months-long standoff. His predecessor, Dickie Abbott, was well-loved by the election district even if he became famous for voting “NO” on almost everything. Abbott’s daughter, Jeaneen Abbott, is Davis’ challenger and she starts the game with good name recognition. All she’s got to do is work on getting the votes to the polls and reminding everybody how obstinate Davis has been, and she’s got a good chance to win the election. It’s rare to have a long-time incumbent in serious trouble of reelection in Halifax County, but that’s what is happening here. SouthsideCentral is giving this race a LIKELY – ABBOTT rating.
District 5: It’s possible to hate Barry Bank and still love Barry Bank. He doesn’t care what you think about what he says and has a diet of shoe leather from putting his foot in his mouth quite often. That being said, he’s a tight fiscal conservative and I admire him for that. I don’t admire him for the stupidity that frequently comes out of his mouth, though. He’s got two challengers in this cycle, Joey Rogers and Buddy Wilborn. Wilborn is the former motorsports teacher for the school system who tried to sue the board to get his job back. Wilborn’s only chance to get elected is for Bank & Rogers to split the vote down to the point that 38% will be a winning number.
Rogers is a much stronger challenger because he’s got money now and will continue to get money. He’s getting that money from the people they want Barry Bank gone because they’re tired of his embarrassments. $2000 from Brian Burton, $1500 for John Cannon, $1500 from Donnie Ellington, $500 from Rick Harrell, $500 from Ted Bennett. You get the point. That money flow will continue as long as its needed. The anti-incumbent mentality combined with lots of campaign money is enough for SouthsideCentral to give this race a LEANS – ROGERS rating now.
In Part #2, we’ll take a look at the School Board elections and The Big One, the sheriff’s race. That’s coming up soon on SouthsideCentral!
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