NC STATE SENATE
NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot.
Reason for my Endorsement: Ralph Hise is corrupt. His opponent is a man of the people.
Ralph Hise (Republican)
https://www.facebook.com/SenRalphHise
Hise lives in Spruce Pine with his wife and their twin sons. A native of Mitchell County, Hise attended Mitchell High School and the North Carolina School of Science & Mathematics. He is a graduate of Appalachian State University and North Carolina State University and a statistician in the Health Policy Institute at UNC-Asheville.
Hise is serving his sixth term as senator of the 47th District of North Carolina. At the opening of the current biennium he was sworn in as Deputy President Pro Tempore for a second term.
Hise is ranked as one of the most effective state senators. He co-chairs the Appropriations/Base Budget Committee, the Redistricting and Elections Committee, and the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Information Technology. As Deputy President Pro Tempore, Sen. Hise is a voting member of all committees in the NC Senate:
“During my time there I have fought to lower taxes, secure elections, and end the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools.”
A thorough Trumpist and an election denier, Hise is never slow to take an extreme position, claiming among other things that “the woke left and fake Republicans” are pushing critical race theory onto innocent children and corrupting education.
His politics are odious but even worse is the power he has to gerrymander General Assembly Senate seats and vote on laws meant to make voting increasingly difficult. Last year as chair of the NC Senate redistricting committee, he double-bunked himself in the same district with the moderate Republican Sen. Deanna Ballard, and easily beat her in the Republican primary, thus ridding his party of a woman who was considered “too soft.”
He also upended County Commission districts for Watauga, gerrymandering them to ensure a Republican majority going forward. This leaves over 20,000 Watauga voters unable to vote who will represent them on the locla Board of Commissioners for 2 more years.
Then, not satisfied that he had done enough, he gerrymandered the Watauga Board of Education for the next general elections in 2026 to match the County Commission districts. The current bipartisan School Board unanimously rejected this move in a letter to the General Assembly.
Hise plays his part to push through a long list of anti-progressive agendas:
• Chief map-drawer and chair of its Redistricting and Elections Committee. As reported without opportunity for retort by the conservative John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal outlet, Hise described the ruling — we are not making this up — as part of a vast Democratic Party plot to take over the judiciary for nefarious purposes
• no tolerance for gun regulations: “That’s why I have an A rating from the NRA.”
• Increased limit on the powers of the Governor, stealing those powers for the GOP radical legislature
• Against LGBTQ rights and same sex marriage
• In favor of increased voter suppression laws
• Favors free market without “burdensome” regulations.
• Fails to disclose receiving more than $9,000 in donations from political action committees (PACs). Democracy North Carolina says his campaign reports have the most missing information and are “the worst of any current state legislator.”
Frank Patton Hughes III (Democrat)
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558530124053
Hughes was born in Iredell County and has lived all over the state but spent most of his growing up and schooling years in Avery County. Hughes is a blue-collar candidate who has emerged to defy the odds and challenge one of the most powerful Republican senators in North Carolina. He learned how to take on hard work from his Methodist minister father.
Then, “in the 7th grade, his parents divorced, and Frank began a long period of “ping-ponging” between different households in many different places in North Carolina.” The divorce also forced Frank to become more independent.
After high school, Hughes began work in construction, met his future wife and married her when he was 21. He then spent years working the furniture market in High Point and installing roofs on high-end construction projects before he enrolled in Caldwell Community College, got his associate’s degree, then attended Appalachian State as a history major and earned his teaching certificate. He is now lead world history teacher at McDowell High School in McDowell County.
Hughes is a strong advocate for public school students, teachers, and staff.:
“Our students and parents deserve top notch education, and our teachers try so hard to deliver. Yet roadblocks, such as underfunding, overcrowding, and other problems due to recent legislation, have weakened our public schools.
He also strongly supports access to high quality affordable healthcare regardless of age or income level and says the region he will represent if elected is in dire need of safe and affordable housing. He feels the person who reprets this Senate district deserve a representative who will also serve as a steward of the region’s forests, rivers, and farms: “Throughout western Carolina we rely on our forests, pastures, and streams for food, livelihood and tourism. These resources must be protected.”
In August Hughes was profiled in an article on Watauga Watch: “Meet the Public School Teacher Challenging Sen. Ralph Hise: Interview with Frank Patton Hughes”.:
“His ’04 Subaru with broken shocks, peeling paint, one missing headlight, and a muffler that doesn’t deserve the name could be heard for a quarter-mile…. He knows greasy and hard work, a public school teacher who didn’t go to college until his late 20s, who had by then spent years working with his hands and his wits, as a roofer, a landscaper, a roust-about, a maker-do of limited means but with boundless optimism.”
When asked what prompted him to take on one of the most powerful Republican senators in Raleigh, Hughes saud, “What’s funny is that I don’t think about him in that way. I view Ralph Hise as a danger to our public schools, and therefore this is a cause worthy of a fight. I understand that the district is heavily Republican, but I feel that having strong public schools is a non-partisan issue.“
“They have ignored public school teachers and staff who have been wanting a pay increase for 20 years. The increases we have received have been small and were negated by our loss of Master’s pay, loss of free healthcare, increasing workload, and increasing class sizes. In short, those issues, and the General Assembly’s ignoring research-based knowledge on the negative impact of class size —it adds up to disrespect, even contempt.”
As for Hise himself, Hughes says, “he is a legislator who doesn’t visit his district and passes unwanted legislation, including unnecessary redistricting. To put it another way, he is not a representative. He does what he wants or what the party asks him to do with little regard for his constituents. I don’t believe the voters know what Ralph Hise is doing, because he’s not present.”