The ceremonial oaths of office proved a bit of a logistical challenge on Monday as Alamance County’s board of commissioners swore in two incoming members, reinstalled two others who were recently reelected, and inaugurated two additional elected officials who prevailed when the county’s voters went to the polls in November’s general election.
In the end, a prearranged division of labor enabled the board to get through the formalities while ensuring that all of Monday’s oaths contained only the sort of swearing which one generally expects to hear in polite company.
The commissioners began their organizational feat with a three-way oath of office that featured newly-elected board member Ed Priola, returning commissioner John Paisley, Jr., and Kelly Allen, whom the local Republican Party has tapped to fill out the unexpired term of former commissioner Craig Turner.
Allen, who until recently served as the mayor of Haw River, received a nod from the party’s executive committee during a closed-door conclave on Saturday, November 23 – just three days after Turner gave up his seat on the county’s governing board in order to assume a district court judgeship that he won in November.
(Monday’s agenda had originally slated Pam Thompson, the top vote getter in this year’s commissioners race, to be sworn ahead of the other commissioners. Her oath was nevertheless postponed due to a slight delay in the arrival of the judge she had selected to officiate).
On hand to administer the oaths to the first three board members was Meredith Edwards, Alamance County’s clerk of superior court. Monday’s oath marked one of Edwards’ final acts as the county’s clerk of court before she, like Turner, dons the robes of a district court judge.
Edwards and Turner will ultimately take their oaths in January along with fellow Republican Bryan Ray, who also snagged a district court judgeship in last month’s election. Until then, the district court bench in Alamance County will be comprised entirely of Democrats, leaving Edwards as one of the few options for members of the county’s all-Republican board who wanted a fellow party member to preside over their oaths.
For one reason or another, Thompson opted not to avail herself of Edwards’ services despite also being a long-time member of the GOP. In lieu of the outgoing clerk of court, Thompson chose to have the honors performed by Democrat Doug Green, a gubernatorial appointee to the district court bench who lost his bid for outright election to former commissioner Turner last month.
Green also presided over two other oaths of office on Monday. One of these swearings-in involved the county’s register of deeds David Barber, a Republican who ran unopposed in the general election.
The other starred David Spruill, a returning member of the county’s nonpartisan board of soil and water conservation supervisors.
The choice of presiding officer wasn’t the only distinction that marked out the participants in Monday’s swearing-in ceremony. Even more varied were the individuals whom the newly-installed office picked to accompany them during their oaths.
Priola and Paisley, for instance, chose to share the limelight with their wives, Larisa and Joyce; while Barber recruited his sister Elizabeth Byars to be at his side.
The other three office holders selected people who weren’t closely related to them as their ceremonial seconds. In Thompson’s case, the choice fell on Krista Knight, a substance abuse counselor who works with inmates in Alamance County’s jail.
Allen opted for current state representative, and fellow Republican, Steve Ross, while Spruill deferred to Ernestine Lewis, a long-time officer in Alamance County’s chapter of the NAACP.
