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Friday was the canvass for counties around the state, where vote tallies are finalized and (most of the time) any lingering doubts about the election outcome, including recounts and various other challenges, are laid to rest.
In New Hanover County, despite concerns on the left about the new Republican leadership of state and local boards of election, and some handwringing about last-minute allegations of a ‘cash for votes’ scheme, there were no procedural surprises. The sturdy margins of the election outcome, especially for the Wilmington city council and mayoral races, didn’t shift much, and there were no zero-hour legal challenges or election complaints.
As I wrote last week, Republican candidates and the local GOP took the sweeping losses in stride, without resorting to any protest or pretext, and turned instead to the 2026 elections — which, I think it’s fair to say, have already kicked off.
The filing period for the election runs from the first of December through the 19th, but we already have a sense of how some of the local races might unfold.
On Friday, Republican Richard Collier announced he would run for New Hanover County commissioner, fresh off his run for Wilmington City Council. Collier, a longtime member of local planning boards, ran a good, policy-focused campaign (and raised over $85,000). But without broad name recognition or incumbency, and facing a rising tide of anti-Trump (and by extension, anti-Republican) sentiment left of center, he wasn’t able to break through. Collier placed fifth, behind the three candidates endorsed by the local Democratic party and fellow Republican Luke Waddell — who was my odds-on prediction to take a top spot, but instead landed in fourth.
There’s a long way to go, even to the primaries in March, but Collier’s announcement indicated he’d continue to focus on policy over partisan rhetoric, writing that “many of the issues he highlighted in his City Council campaign are the same challenges facing New Hanover County, including rising costs of living, infrastructure concerns driven by rapid growth, and quality of life pressures affecting families and businesses.”
Collier joins incumbent LeAnn Pierce, currently vice chair of the board of commissioners, who took a moderate tone in her 2022 campaign and has largely avoided partisan bombast on the dais — although some of that sharpened up a bit during the tense budget negotiations in June. There will be pressure, I suspect, to tack to the right in an attempt to turn out more MAGA faithful, but I’ll be surprised if Collier and Pierce don’t keep an even keel. If nothing else, there are plenty of moderate conservative-leaning unaffiliated voters, especially in the unincorporated county — the trick is drawing them out to the polls (midterm elections help, but not as much as presidential-election years).
There’s still over a month to go before filing closes, and while I haven’t heard of any other Republicans planning a run for commissioner, you never know. In 2022, there were four candidates for two seats. The populist anti-development candidate Tom Toby took the top spot in the primary, but in the general, Pierce won the most votes, besting even veteran Democrat incumbent Rob Zapple.
Zapple’s running for a fourth term next year, but he’ll face three other Democrats in March’s primary: Dr. LaShonda Wallace, New Hanover County school board member Judy Justice, and Wilmington City Councilwoman Salette Andrews. Two candidates will advance to the general election.
It will be interesting, as always, to pivot from city politics — which leans left, and often focuses on downtown issues — to county politics, which leans a bit right, and often focuses on single-family homeowner issues, like taxes and infrastructure. Development, or rather anti-development frustration, will remain a common thread, I imagine.
Zapple has a good track record, earning the votes of a more moderate, even conservative, voter base — who, after three terms, know what they’re getting with him. Meanwhile, Andrews has been more outspokenly left-leaning during her first term on city council. She raised her visibility considerably during the debate over Wilmington’s anti-camping ordinance, but it remains to be seen if a more liberal progressive voice gets heard in a county where Donald Trump was less than a percentage point behind Kamala Harris.
Justice is a bit of a wild card. In her first term on the school board, she was frequently combative and was censured by the Democrat-controlled board in 2022 and lost her reelection bid that same year. Two years later, however, she took the top spot and has since been more conciliatory and even bipartisan, despite the significant polarization on the 5-2 Republican-controlled board. Whether that translates to the county commissioner race, of course, remains to be seen. Wallace is a newcomer, and we’ve yet to really see how she’ll approach the purple politics of the county.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, if Justice makes it through the primary and wins next November, the New Hanover County Democratic Party (NHCDP) will appoint a replacement to the school board to fill out the last two years of her term. If Andrews makes it through and wins in November, there will be a more interesting process: an open application period for anyone to throw their hats in the ring (best I can tell, this happened last in 2008, and dozens of names were on the list, including Zapple, before council ultimately voted for Margaret Haynes).
The Swapping Game
There’s been some criticism of Andrews and Justice, on both the left and right, from folks who feel a candidate has an obligation to serve out the term they ran for instead of pursuing higher office.
“The community suffers from political hobbyism,” Democratic Councilman Kevin Spears wrote on Facebook.
Republican school board member David Perry was also critical, writing, “I understand that people often use the school board as a stepping stone for higher office. However, I think last year’s voters would have appreciated knowing beforehand that Ms. Justice had no intention of finishing her term on the school board. Perhaps they would have looked more closely at Nikki [Bascome] and Natosha [Tew], who would have been committed to finishing their 4-year term. BTW - I don’t want to hear anything about how Bill Rivenbark did it. Two wrongs don’t make it right.”
As Perry noted, Rivernbark was halfway through his first term as a Republican school board member when he ran for commissioner. But if conservative voters were upset with him, they haven’t shown it. Rivenbark took the top spot in the 2020 county commissioner race. (That one, still a head scratcher for some, has frequently been chalked up to the megawatt power of name recognition — in this case, borrowed voltage from his brother Charlie, a longtime Wilmington City Council member.) Despite fundraising and advertising efforts that were more modest compared to his fellow Republican candidates, he again took the top spot in 2024. Likewise, Republicans seemed happy with Rivenbark’s replacement, Pete Wildeboer, who was the second-highest vote-getter when he was elected to a full term in 2022.
It’s also worth noting, more generally, that candidates launch campaigns for higher office in the middle of their current terms all the time. Barack Obama, for no small example, left his Senate seat to successfully run for president in 2008 (creating an opportunity that was, apparently, too good for then-Governor Rod Blagojevich to resist).
For both parties, it’s long been an effective way to almost double their winnings — boosting one candidate into a more consequential position while helping to establish a new candidate as a de facto incumbent who can then run in a couple of years with name recognition and a track record in office.
Still, I don’t discount the critique that Spears and Perry are making, and I think it probably overlaps with a more general sense that appointing, rather than electing, people to public office feels somehow undemocratic (and, yes, I know that holding a special election for every vacancy would be a logistical nightmare). But I’m not sure how many voters take such a philosophical approach.
I think for many voters the real concern will be how the city and local parties handle appointing replacements. If Andrews wins, the all-Democratic council will pick a replacement — an opportunity that will be theirs to lose. If Justice wins a seat on the county commission, and serves well, and the NHCDP appoints a good candidate to the school board, then — for Democrats — it’s all to the good.
To that end, I don’t think conservative voters will be upset that Republican Commissioner Dane Scalise is planning a run for District 20. Scalise signed paperwork this past Monday to shift his existing committee to a state representative run.
Republican Ted Davis, Jr., who currently represents District 20, has held office since 2012. For several years, he's been rumored to be planning his retirement, although Davis hasn’t confirmed that yet. Davis is himself a former county commissioner who was appointed to state office a few months before his 2012 election.
It’s not clear who Scalise will face in the 2026 election, although Democratic school board member Tim Merrick has been rumored as a possible candidate.
And, of course, if Merrick wins in 2026, he’ll leave a vacancy on the school board. If Scalise is victorious, he’ll leave one of the board of commissioners — and I suspect Waddell is high on the New Hanover County Republican Party’s shortlist of potential appointees to that spot. GOP Chairman John Hinnant has said he would refrain from asking Waddell about seeking office again for at least a year (which is exactly how much time it would be before Scalise would leave a vacancy on the board of commissioners if voters send him to Raleigh).
Sheriff Swap
Speaking of swapping, it’s been about a month since New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon confirmed he had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
Many have noted this is not McMahon’s first time swapping parties. Back in 2009, outgoing Democratic Sheriff Sid Causey effectively appointed McMahon as his successor. New Hanover County, like about half the counties in the state, allows the local political parties to appoint a replacement if a sheriff leaves office (although the county commissioners officially vote to approve whoever the party nominates).
Several people, including North Carolina NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell, have recounted similar stories about that time. When Causey brought McMahon to the NHCDP for formal approval, someone asked the heir-apparent how long he’d been a Democrat.
“One month,” was reportedly McMahon’s answer. (His voting record more or less suggests a similar timeline.)
Causey later said he regretted appointing McMahon, criticizing his leadership and challenging him in the 2014 primary. McMahon handily beat Causey by a 4:1 ratio and went on to win the 2014 general election easily.
Because sheriffs — and, for some even more obscure reasons, registers of deeds — are allowed to enforce political loyalty in their offices, it's easier for them to establish a succession plan than, say, a district attorney or a mayor. Sheriffs are literally allowed to fire people for failing to support them politically. I’ve heard many times from former deputies who said things didn’t exactly go great for them because they supported Causey (or, at least, didn’t support McMahon). That could be sour grapes, but even if it’s true, it’s completely legal — a precedent upheld by a 2016 state Supreme Court case. If a county commissioner were to have a top staffer fired for not donating to his or her reelection campaign, that would be the scandal of the year – but sheriffs’ war chests are routinely filled with contributions from top deputies.
For a long time, it appeared McMahon’s chief deputy was next in line and even changed their party affiliation to Democrat in order to line things up — but he ultimately retired in early 2024. There’s currently a top command staff deputy whose name I’ve heard batted around pretty frequently as McMahon’s new pick to replace him when he retires. The deputy is a Republican, and I’ve heard that’s why McMahon might have switched parties: to facilitate the time-honored (if occasionally controversial) tradition of sheriffs picking their successors.
For his part, McMahon has said his party switch was a deeply personal one, made after prayer and consideration. He also said it was his desire to “keep politics out of the Office of the Sheriff.” And, while some folks might disagree with me, having covered McMahon for almost a decade, I think that’s true, at least with respect to partisan politics.
Our sheriff’s office, not unlike our district attorney’s office, doesn’t really run on the same partisan operating system as other government bodies. If you’re wondering why the NHC GOP never put any real resources into challenging Ed McMahon or Ben David, that’s why. Especially for Republicans who prioritize law and order, McMahon and David were doing a fairly good job. In fact, since 2016, much of the public criticism I heard of the two officials came from the progressive left, not the right. Other than the decriminalization of small amounts of cannabis, there wasn’t much ‘woke’ going on — especially in the sheriff’s office, whether McMahon was a Democrat or a Republican.
So was McMahon’s party swap a personal decision born of prayer, or a practical solution to the political realities of succession? Maybe both. But, of course, before McMahon can appoint the next sheriff, he has to win next year’s sheriff’s race. It’s possible past Republican challengers could reemerge in the primary — and I’ve heard rumblings that the Democratic party, which has been rankled by several of McMahon’s recent decisions, could back a challenger. We won’t have to wait long to see how that shapes up.
More from Campaign 2026
We’re still waiting to see what emerges in the school board race, where four seats will be up. Brittnei LaRue, running as a Democrat, is a newcomer to politics and is starting her campaign with a listening tour. (I’m curious to hear what she’s hearing.) Whether the four Republican candidates who swept decisively into office in 2022 decide to give it a go again remains to be seen, although I’m not sure the political tide that helped carry their slate to victory is pushing in the same direction right now, which could curb their enthusiasm (and voters’).
We’ll also see whether Republican Jason Smith, like Democrat Ben David before him, settles into a series of uncontested district attorney elections (after a tough primary in 2004, David ran unopposed five times). As I understand it, because David retired mid-term, the 2024 election was for just a two-year stint — and I’m not sure Democrats have the fight or the finances to go back to the mat for another round so soon after Democrat Rebecca Zimmer Donaldson spent close to $400,000 in a race that turned distinctly nasty.
Even more expensive, and often even nastier, is the ever-contentious Senate District 7 race. Republican Michael Lee has announced he’ll run again, whether anyone wants to take on the third-most-powerful person in the state senate is an open question. If they do, we’ll be on the lookout for millions in campaign spending, and ready to fact-check a flood of campaign mailers and ad spots.
Plus, we’ll have races in Brunswick, Columbus, and Pender counties, the register of deeds, the Supreme Court and Appellate Court judges, state house seats, and federal races.
While past performance is no guarantee of future performance, it’s hard to imagine we won’t see another biennial trouncing of a Democratic challenger by Republican Congressman David Rouzer. Far more up for grabs is the U.S. Senate title fight between Democrat Roy Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley. The stakes are high for Democrats, even if you don’t see Cooper on the shortlist for the presidential nomination in 2028 (which I don’t). They’re high for Republicans, too; even if they’re expected to keep their Senate majority in 2026, erosion of their 53-47 lead over Democrats and left-leaning independents would be a bad sign for conservatives.
All of that to say, there will be plenty of grist for the punditry mill, but also lots to dig into in terms of policy, campaign finance, and the ever-changing will and whim of the electorate — so, 2026, here we come.
[Disclosure notice: Commissioner Rob Zapple is a member of the WHQR Board of Directors, which has no say over editorial content — including this newsletter — or news coverage in general.]
