NC LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot.
Reason for my Endorsement: No brainer for me. Rachel Hunt is the real deal, walks-the-walk woman I’ve been waiting for.
Rachel Hunt (Democrat)
https://www.facebook.com/HuntForNC
Hunt is an attorney and a mother. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her law degree from the University of South Carolina. Her initial legal career was spent defending woman and children in Court and in volunteering in public schools.
Hunt was first elected in the 2018 Blue Wave to an NC House seat from Mecklenburg County, reelected in 2020, and then elected to an overlapping NC Senate seat in 2022. The upward trajectory of Rachel Hunt could not be clearer. She announced at the beginning of March 2023 that she would be seeking the office of Lt. Gov.
Hunt’s priorities in her run for Lt. Governor are nicely fleshed out on her website: standing up for rural areas, keeping communities safe, prioritizing a quality education, protecting the environment, securing democracy, supporting small business and veterans, affordable health care, and defending women’s health care rights.
The daughter of the celebrated “education governor” Jim Hunt, Rachel Hunt has also made education advocacy and activism the hallmark of her career. She created businesses to help match students to schools, and she has served on the North Carolina Charter Schools Advisory Board and the North Carolina Education and Workforce Innovation Commission.
Back in May, Rachel Hunt went straight at her opponent’s (Hal Weatherman’s) political grille, introducing in the NC Senate, where she serves a Mecklenburg district, Senate Bill 909, “An Act to Amend the Constitution of North Carolina To Protect Women’s Health.”
The bill calls for a public referendum on abortion rights for the November 2024 ballot. Of course, that’s not going to happen because Phil Berger controls the NC Senate, but it was a clear signal of Hunt’s overt strategy to go directly at the soft policy underbelly that Hal Weatherman presents. (He’s on the record as extremely anti-abortion as of late August, and there’s no indication that he’s regretting that position.)
In a Twitter thread announcing SB 909, Hunt laid out her policy:
“Decisions around pregnancy, including abortion, birth control, and miscarriage care, are personal and should be left up to women and their families …. The people of North Carolina deserve a chance to vote for themselves on whether we will protect women’s healthcare or continue down the path of states like AL and TX.”
Hunt added that politicians should not be in charge of personal medical decisions.
Wayne Jones (Constitution)
Hal Weatherman (Republican)
https://www.halweathermanfornc.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hal.weatherman
Weatherman is a native of North Carolina. He received his undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University and his Master’s Degree from Wheaton College. He is the founder and President of the Electoral Education Foundation, a 501-c3 non profit organization dedicated to advancing election integrity efforts in North Carolina.(Click that last link to find out what they’re up to.)
Weatherman’s adult working life seems to have been confined to running the campaigns and then the elective offices of people like former Charlotte Congresswoman Sue Myrick and Dan Forest, which is what you can do with a Master’s in “Communications” (Wheaton College) — concentration on P.R. His Bachelor’s degree is from Wake Forest, where he majored in religion.
Weatherman is wrapping himself up tightly with Mark Robinson and with Donald Trump. Before ganging up with those two, he was practically indisguishable from the hyper-conservative Christian nationalist Dan Forest, serving as Forest’s chief of staff when Forest was himself the Lieutenant Governor.
That’s the crowd that Hal Weatherman is proudest of (he also worked for a time for the notorious Madison Cawthorn), and that’s an explanation for why he did so well in the Republican primary, beating a raft-load of other more moderate candidates, including Watauga’s own Deanna Ballard, and then going on to beat Forsyth District Attorney (and vastly more qualified candidate) Jim O’Neil in a runoff.
Weatherman, a self-professed Christain Fundalmentalist, is, in short, a right-wing extremist politician. Under Weatherman’s guidance and tutelage as Forest’s chief of staff, Forest kept his kids out of public schools, championed anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy clinics,” opposed the very idea of the minimum wage, wanted to abolish all corporate income taxes, repeal every part of the Affordable Care Act, and associated with far-right conspiracy theorists.
He’s on the record agreeing with Mark Robinson (before Robinson waffled on it) about anti-abortion measures: “Both Robinson and Weatherman say they want to see a ‘heartbeat’ bill pass the legislature, which would ban abortion after cardiac activity is detected, which is around five or six weeks into pregnancy.”
Bottomline: Weatherman has promised, if elected, to be Dan Forest.
Shannon W. Bray (Libertarian)
https://www.facebook.com/ShannonBrayNC
Bray lives in Apex and has three children. He is a technology entrepreneur who started his information technology career shortly after being honorably discharged from the Navy. Bray has also authored a number of books and technical training courses. He ran for US Senate in North Carolina in 2020 and 2022 and had originally planned to run for Governor in 2024.
Bray says if elected, he will work tirelessly to ensure the state works towards:
- Putting Kids First and Protecting Parents’ Rights
- Providing Affordable Healthcare Options
- Limiting Anti-Competitive Business Regulation
- Keeping Our Communities Safe
- Protecting the Integrity of Our Elections
- Achieving Fairness for Independent Voters
- Keeping North Carolina Beautiful
- Fighting Special Interests
- Supporting Our Military Families
There have regularly been some policy points that make Libertarianism somewhat interesting — Bray is loudly in favor of marijuana legalization for example, but in the main the Libertarian philosophy tips way over into an extremism only Ayn Rand and her acolytes can stomach. Bray posted this yardsign on his Facebook page :
