A recent change in one local official’s voter registration has brought an abrupt end to the Republican Party’s six-and-a-half-year monopoly on Alamance County’s governing board.
County commissioner Pam Thompson has updated her registration at the county’s election office to replace her long-time identification as a Republican in favor of an unaffiliated designation.
Thompson told The Alamance News that she formalized this change about two week ago after she ended a four-year stint on the Governor’s Crime Commission, where she had served as an appointee of the state senate majority leader, Republican Phil Berger.
Thompson said that her change of affiliation had actually been some time in coming, although in deference to Berger, she postponed its consummation until the end of her term on the crime commission. She added, however, that she reached the tipping point in her lifelong connection to the GOP shortly after November’s general election.
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Thompson recalled that she took issue with the leadership of local Republican party when its members gathered behind closed doors a few weeks after the election to select a successor to former county commissioner Craig Turner, who had just won a position as a district court judge. Thompson added that her misgivings about this conclave were reinforced by a conversation with this newspaper’s editor and publisher Tom Boney, Jr., who had assured her that the GOP’s secret meeting was contrary to the provisions of North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law.
“I know what the Open Meetings Law means,” she emphasized before recalling a contrary response she later heard from a former commissioner candidate who has also been active in the local Republican Party.
“So, Leonard Harrison went on talk line and said she’s just dumb commissioner for believing Tom Boney about the Open Meetings Law,” she recalled. “And you know what? If you don’t want me and don’t appreciate me and think I’m dumb, well I’m through with you.”
Thompson conceded that Harrison’s rebuke came on top of tensions with other local Republicans over policy positions that have, at times, found her in agreement with people of other political persuasions. She added, however, that she never imagined her willingness to reach across the aisle would be held against her by her fellow Republicans.
I’ve served this county well and have always been honest,” she said. “But I vote for both [parties], and there’s good and bad on both sides.”
Prior to Thompson’s registration change, the five-member board of commissioners had been a solid Republican concern since December of 2018, when Democrat Bob Byrd stepped down from the dais after his defeat in that year’s general election.
Thompson insisted that her current status as an unaffiliated voter isn’t a stepping stone to a new political identity as a Democrat. Nor does she see her newfound partisan independence as any hindrance to her service on the board of commissioners.
Thompson, who joined the five-member board as a Republican in 2020, was still affiliated with the GOP when she won her second term as a commissioner in November’s general election. The newly-minted independent said that she has no plans to step down before her current four-year term expires at the end of 2028. Nor is she the least bit worried about the hurdles that confront an unaffiliated candidate who runs for a partisan office.
Under state law, an unaffiliated candidate must circulate a petition in order to appear on the ballot for a partisan post. In a county-level race, this petition must contain signatures from at least 4 percent of “all registered N.C. voters within the county.” As of Tuesday, the county’s elections office had a total of 116,707 registered voters on record – putting the threshold for a successful petition at 4,669 signatures. Even so, the actual number of signatures that Thompson would need in 2028 will hinge the registration figures from January 1 of that year.
Yet, Thompson insists that she isn’t losing any sleep over this potential hardship.
“I’m done in 2028,” she declared. “I’m not sitting here forever so, when I’m 98, I’m freezing up, looking like it’s Weekend at Bernie’s.”
