NC AUDITOR
NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot.
Reason for my Endorsement: Confession: I almost went with Libertarian Bob Drach for this seat. I spent a lot of time reading about him and watching his videos. He’s very smart and right-headed for the most part. But other than “I will clean up the mess,” I could never really get handle on what and how. Bottomline is that Jessica Holmes is a capable and sure bet, and Boliek is a jerk.
Bob Drach (Libertarian)
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557048760172
Drach is qualified for this job on its face. He is a former Certified Management Accountant, Treasurer, CFO, and CIO, and worked over 4 years for Deloitte, a major professional services firm. He says he has multiple other professional certifications, has taught in public schools, and served on the New Hanover County Board of Equalization and Review. He is both a former Peace Corps volunteer and a graduate of the business school at Stanford University.
Drach says NC state government is dominated by Democrats and Republicans, and they shouldn’t be auditing themselves. He’s got a point, and I even found myself reading up on Article 5A of the NC State statutes to get a better picture of what this office actually does.
Drach states that he is qualified for the office in part because he says it’s a mess and because he’s the only candidate independent enough to clean it up. Maybe so, but he himself is a member of the third largest political party in NC, and I’m not impressed by a lot of Libertarian principles:
“In the United States, libertarian is a typology used to describe a political position that advocates small government and is culturally liberal and fiscally conservative…. Libertarians support legalization of victimless crimes such as the use of marijuana while opposing high levels of taxation and government spending on health, welfare and education.”
I really like the guy, and I swear I spent hours watching his vide0s to only come out of it all with (1) he says he agrees with libertarians “in principle,” (2) believes in their “non-aggression” principle, and (3) that he got a bad taste of socialism when he was in Africa: “I’m suspicious of socialism at best.”
Now maybe none of this has anything at all to do with who runs the NC Auditor’s office, but what if it does?
Jessica Holmes (Democrat)
https://www.facebook.com/JessicaHolmesNC
Let’s get his out of the way first: The North Carolina state Auditor exists “to safeguard taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste or abuse and strengthen the effectiveness of federal and state programs impacting our everyday lives from education, healthcare, hurricane disaster recovery, services for seniors and people with disabilities, our youth and economic growth.”
Just as important, the state Auditor also serves as an ex-officio member on the Local Government Commission, which oversees the operations for hundreds of towns, cities and counties.
Holmes earned her Bachelor’s and her law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. She worked as a solo legal practitioner and as counsel to various organizations and earned experience in labor and employment law. She was elected to two terms on the Wake County Commission and served as Chair before running in 2020 for Commissioner of Labor against Republican Josh Dobson, who beat her by a single percentage point. Before being appointed Auditor, her regular job title had been Deputy Industrial Commissioner.
Holmes, a lawyer, has served as state auditor since December when she was appointed to the position by Gov. Cooper after the resignation of Auditor Beth Woods over a scandal involving a late-night hit-and-run that ultimately led to Woods’ resignation.
One of Holmes’s main achievements since has been an audit of federal funds received by the state. Her office said it found inadequate monitoring of certain block grants and funds for housing, foster care and opioid abuse treatment; incorrect usage of foster care funds; and deficiencies in the process to determine eligibility for adoptions and Medicaid. Most of these cases involved nominal amounts when compared with the state’s $30 billion budget, but she seems off to a good start.
Dave Boliek (Republican)
https://www.facebook.com/david.boliek.3
Boliek, 56, is a former prosecutor who runs a private law practice in Fayetteville. He has never run for office before, and until early summer of 2023, he had been a longtime conservative Democrat. He was elected by fellow UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustee members in 2021 to chair the board, and made no bones that he was considering a first-time run for office which necessitated a switch of party affiliation, and which happened in June 2023.
Boliek describes himself as a fiscal conservative who considers himself culturally traditional and strongly Christian.
A WRAL interview with Boliek in May was revealing:
“Boliek is candid about his political beliefs on the campaign trail and his ideas for what government agencies should be audited. He has said that while on the UNC Board of Trustees he worked to eliminate woke diversity and equity policies and that, if elected, he’d audit not only the DMV but also the state’s election boards.”
It gets worse:
“Within the auditor’s office, Boliek wants to open the Office of Election Integrity to audit the state’s voter rolls, election equipment and operations. The State Auditor has legal authority to audit the N.C. State Board of Elections but does not audit election results, according to the Auditor’s Office.”
Boliek’s party-switch and subsequent candidacy for the Auditor job earned him plenty of blowback in Chapel Hill. “If someone is actively seeking the nomination of a political party and they are a member of our board of trustees, this is yet another step in politics infecting the decision making of the board of trustees,” said Mimi Chapman, who served as chair of the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill for much of Boliek’s term as chair. “Almost by definition they are trying to please, I guess in particular, primary voters. They’re being asked to please the most fervent, extreme parts of their party. In the case of chair Boliek, his only place to demonstrate his bona fides would be his actions on the board of trustees.”
It gets worse.
Boliek was at the center of the controversy over the UNC board’s refusal to vote on tenure for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. When enormous public pressure led to an up-or-down vote on the tenure question, Boliek was one of just four of the 13 members to vote “no.” Feeling particularly singled out as unwelcome, Hannah-Jones went to Howard University instead.
Under Boliek’s leadership, the UNC board elevated Chris Clemens to the office of provost at the university. Clemens, who has described himself as “among the most outspoken conservative members of the Arts & Sciences faculty at UNC for many years” was embroiled in a dispute over the creation of an initiative at Chapel Hill called the “Program in Civic Virtue and Civil Discourse.”
The board voted to fast-track that program, and to hire a public relations firm to help it deal with inevitable backlash. That led to board members penning editorials for the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and appearing on various Fox News shows to say the university has “no shortage of left-of-center views” and that the new school would provide a counterbalance.