Too many candidates in the air
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No, I’m guessing that the reason Brian is running unopposed is that Tim Moffitt spent $1935 for a survey this past February, and it showed that the BCGOP had no one who could beat Brian. Kay Olsen’s sham candidacy went to waste – nobody wanted to take her spot on the ballot, only to get whomped.
http://cf.ncsbe.gov/cf_rpt_search_org/cf_report_image.aspx?DID=200247
Interesting. But why would he be taking a poll in February when the filing deadline was in January?
Because it really looks like Kay Olsen was merely holding a space on the ballot open for them, while they struggled to come up with an actual candidate. It’s perfectly legal, apparently, to file for a race you have no intention of running in. And then when you drop out, your party can name someone at their leisure to take your place.
Good point. At the same time if Moffit was interested in returning to Raleigh he could have run for Appadcoa’s seat. That would have been a safe Republican seat.
In any case it is telling that Republicans could not find a candidate to run in the most Republican of Buncombe’s three districts.
We heard through the grapevine last fall that Moffitt was indeed putting out feelers about running for Apodaca’s seat. But the consensus was that he didn’t have the support for that either. Whether he is that unpopular among Henderson County GOPers, or simply because they weren’t excited about electing someone from Asheville, I don’t know. I do know that the hard right, like the Tea Party down there, really weren’t wild about him. I attended a couple of their meetings, where they thrashed him pretty good over things like drones and private toll roads.
I think the correct way to interpret the report is that a payment to Conquest Communications for a survey was made on 2/8/2016. If so, the survey likely occured prior to that date, possibly in January 2016.
Let history so record.
And in fact, the filing deadline was Dec. 21st.
https://www.buncombecounty.org/common/election/2016-filing-fees.pdf