Watauga County Clerk of Superior Court

NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot. All of my research sources and links for these candidates are presented after and below the candidate profiles.

Reason for my Endorsement:

The Clerk of Superior Court is more than the person who keeps the courthouse records. In North Carolina, the Clerk also has judicial responsibilities, including estates, guardianships, foreclosures and other special proceedings. The Clerk runs an office that handles everything from court filings and money to people dealing with death, family disputes and other difficult moments. This year’s race is a rematch between Republican incumbent Charles Haynes and Democrat Holly Fehl. Four years ago, Haynes won by just 31 votes:  11,227 to 11,196.

Both of these candidates are well qualified for the position. I called around inquiring about both of them from people who deal with them both professionally and personally. Some preferred Fehl, others preferred Haynes. Fehl is a liberal. Haynes is a conservative who opposed the Town’s COVID mask mandate. But it’s Fehl’s stated goals and a more diverse background that got her the nod.

HOLLY FEHL (Democrat)

Holly Fehl for Clerk

Fehl has spent much of her working life around the legal system. She has lived in Watauga County since 1987, graduated from Watauga High School and Appalachian State University, and worked for years as a paralegal, including in family law. She became a Watauga County deputy clerk in November 2013 and left that job in January 2015 to work for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction.

For about nine years she worked there as a Judicial Services Coordinator, a courthouse-related position involving the movement of cases from court into probation supervision. She left that position in 2024 for private paralegal work. Fehl told me in October that she is now back with the Department of Adult Correction.

Fehl first ran against Haynes in 2022. She came within 31 votes of beating him. This time she focuses largely on how the office deals with people and how employees work together. Like Haynes, Fehl talks about cross-training. She says an employee should be able to help someone even when the staff member who normally handles that particular work is unavailable. During the Chamber forum she said she there had been occasions when that had not happened. Fehl believes the office also needs better outreach and interaction with the public.

The elected Clerk doesn’t simply set those state employees’ salaries, and Fehl wants to advocate for better pay for Clerk’s-office employees. Fehl later described this to me as advocacy: examining salaries and job-related expenses and pushing for employees where the Clerk has an opportunity to do so.

Asked what she most wanted to do differently from the way the office is being run under Haynes, Fehl said: “I would like to improve relationships with department heads.”

CHARLES M. HAYNES (Republican)

No website found.

Haynes was appointed Clerk of Superior Court in June 2021 when longtime Clerk Diane Deal retired. He wasn’t new to the office. He had already worked there for about eight years as a deputy and assistant clerk. He won a full term in 2022. That makes this election partly a judgment on five years of actually running the office.  A state performance audit that dealt with financial and internal control matters conducted during Haynes’s tenure reported no problems that auditors were required to report under Government Auditing Standards. But the audit did not evaluate employee turnover, customer service, case processing, or Haynes’s overall management of the office.

The biggest operational change during his term wasn’t his creation. Watauga joined North Carolina’s statewide eCourts system in 2025, moving much of the court system from paper records toward electronic filing and access. Before the transition, Haynes called implementation “a challenge,” but said electronic access would ultimately benefit the public. Haynes has also been involved in the less glamorous problems that come with operating a courthouse in downtown Boone. In 2024, he participated with county officials in discussions with the Town of Boone over courthouse and juror parking.

Customer service is a recurring theme when Haynes talks about the job. He says people often come into the Clerk’s office frightened or confused and that employees need both knowledge and the ability to deal well with people. Haynes also emphasizes cross-training. In this year’s Chamber of Commerce candidate forum, Haynes said employees need to know enough about different parts of the office to provide backup when someone is sick, on vacation or otherwise unavailable. He said the eCourts transition made that even more important, although he said his office had already been prepared to work that way.

SOURCES/LINKS