In other 2026 political news: Neither party has filed candidate for partial, 2-year county commissioner seat
Less than six months after his election to Burlington’s city council, Burlington’s former mayor Ian Baltutis has accepted an overture from local Democrats to run for the state’s 63rd house district.
On Thursday, the executive committee of Alamance County’s Democratic Party formally tapped Baltutis to take the place of Whitney Olive – who had been the party’s nominee for the 63rd house district before her withdrawal from the ballot in April.
Having accepted the party’s selection, Baltutis will go on to face Republican Ryan Moffitt for a seat that currently belongs to outgoing Republican state representative Steve Ross.
Baltutis told The Alamance News that he planned to make his selection official on Monday by formally filing his candidacy with the Alamance County board of election. Yet, the path that has led him to this juncture in his political career actually began several weeks earlier when Olive tentatively announced her withdrawal from the race on social media.
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Olive, who subsequently deleted this post from her Facebook page, cryptically told The Alamance News that she was still “a candidate as of now” when asked about the status of her campaign on April 21. A day earlier, however, Baltutis had filed a “statement of organization” with the N.C. state board of elections as a precursor to a potential campaign for the state’s 63rd house district.
In a recent interview with The Alamance News, the current city councilmember acknowledged that his pursuit of the state house began some time before the party’s leadership anointed him its nominee.
“There has been a process over the past few weeks with candidate selection,” he elaborated on Monday, “and I was contacted shortly after Whitney announced her resignation.”
Back to the campaign trail
Under state law, an office seeker who wants to bow out of a race after candidate registration must, first, send a written notice to his or her local elections office. According to Alamance County’s election director Dawn Hurdle, Olive fulfilled this legal requirement on April 21.
Yet, it wasn’t until May 14 that the executive committee of the local Democratic Party met to select a new champion for the 63rd district’s house seat.
Baltutis, who was present at the meeting by virtue of being an elected office older and ergo a member of the committee, recalled that his nomination was the only one that came up for a vote that evening. It went on to secure the approval of the committee members who reside in the 63rd district and were qualified to weigh in on Olive’s successor.
Although best known from his 6-year tenure as Burlington’s mayor, Baltutis was not exactly new to the cut-and-thrust of state-level politics when he accepted the executive committee’s nomination on Thursday.
In 2014, the native Minnesotan made an unsuccessful bid to oust Ross from his seat in the state house following an equally ill-favored attempt to wrest Burlington’s mayorship from the city’s incumbent mayor Ronnie Wall.
Baltutis returned to the municipal politics a year later when Wall announced his retirement from elected office. That fall, the third-time candidate managed to beat out veteran councilman Jim Butler to secure the position of mayor, which he held on to until a rematch with Butler in 2021. Baltutis ultimately returned to the campaign trail in 2025 when he picked up a regular seat on the council while running in tandem with fellow Democrat and Burlington’s current mayor Beth Kennett.
While technically a nonpartisan body, the membership of Burlington’s city council had found itself drawn into a number of partisan controversies during Baltutis’ tenure as the mayor. Since his return to the dais last year, Baltutis has generally steered clear of these extracurricular dustups. All the same, the aspiring state representative admits it’s been difficult to stay in his own lane, so to speak, given recent moves by the General Assembly to pare back local taxing authority and other elements of local control.
“I’ve watched our legislature continuously erode local control across the board,” Baltutis went on to explain in an interview, “and this just makes our jobs as local leaders harder and harder.”
Baltutis added that these growing intrusions by state-level officials go a long way toward explaining why he has decided to run for the state house so soon after his return to the council. Should he win in November’s general election, the city councilman insists that he’ll step down from his seat on the council with the knowledge he’ll be advancing the municipality’s interests.
“While I love serving on our city council, the work of supporting our council and our community works both at the local level and at the state level,” he said. “But I’m glad I don’t have to give up the role [of a councilman] before I win in November.
No update on special commissioner term
Hurdle confirmed that Baltutis had dropped by the local elections office on Monday to file his candidacy for the state house. She added, however, that of Monday afternoon, she had not heard from either political party about the other big question mark on November’s ballot.
In mid March, the leadership of Alamance County’s Republican Party formally met to appoint a successor to the late county commissioner John Paisley, Jr., who had passed away in February with nearly three years left in his term on the county’s governing board.
The party’s members ultimately tapped Burlington businessman Sam Powell to warm Paisley’s seat until November’s general election. They also selected Powell as their nominee for a special race on November’s ballot for the final two years of Paisley’s uncompleted term on the board.
Hurdle has nevertheless informed The Alamance News that the local GOP has yet to notify her office about Powell’s selection for this slot on the ballot. Nor has anyone from the Democratic Party submitted a rival candidate for Paisley’s old post.
“Nobody has given me a name to place on the ballot as of today,” the county’s election director confirmed in an interview shortly after lunch time on Monday. “They technically have until the beginning of August, but we’d like to have it sooner so we can start printing ballots.”
