Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson Announces his Candidacy for N.C. Senate, 1st District | Eastern NC Now

    Incumbent Senator Marc Basnight has a challenger for the seat he has held since 1984. Enter 4 term Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson, who has long given voice to the unwavering conservative Resistance in eastern North Carolina for nearly 14 years, as his deceptively energetic Republican challenger. Commissioner Richardson is scheduled to meet with the State's leading Republicans in Raleigh on Wednesday, February 17, 2010, to engage their support.

    Senator Marc Basnight has long been regarded as eastern North Carolina’s greatest advocate for bringing taxpayer’s money back to eastern North Carolina to fund his pet projects, and the pet projects of his political supporters as well. The Senator’s political revolving door of: taxing the State’s citizenry good and hard (North Carolina is the highest taxed state in the Southeast), and then working hard to wrest as much of that money, as is politically possible, from grasp of other needful Democrat politicians, amid their favored government bureaucracies, to keep the voters Down East voting Democrat, and especially for Marc.

     1st District Congressional Candidate Ashley Woolard and Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson share a smile at the Beaufort County Republican Men's Club in October, 2009.

    Although one would sense that this would create an enormous competition among other Democrats, who had already signed on for the hefty taxing of their constituents, Senator Basnight is currently without peer in regards to keeping much of the Democrat largesse, while meeting out political favors to other helpful politicians to keep his we-tax-and-I- spend power grab firmly intact. One downside to the donors, in this poor economy, is that it takes many contributions to keep his massive political empire in check.

    In some measure of sarcastic sympathy, Conservative County Commissioner Hood Richardson remarked this day, “Marc Basnight’s supporters will be delighted, because when I am elected to replace the Senator, they will no longer need to write those huge checks to fund his bountiful war chest. When I’m elected, here Down East, our government in Raleigh will no longer be for sale. The people‘s seat will be returned to those folks, who own their vote as their voice, and I hear them calling, ‘I want my government back. It is no longer for sale.’ ”

    The Conservative Republicans; those who have served as Beaufort County Commissioners in the last 14 years, from left to right: Hood Richardson, Stan Deatherage, Carol Cochran, Chris Cayton.

    Commissioner Richardson has long made known that he has little patience for the liberal agenda. In the past number of years, the Commissioner has railed against issues as divergent as the State’s passive approach to eliminating illegal immigration to the continued poor performance of the North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction.

    Commissioner Richardson further contends, “I have long held established institutions, such as the venerable United States Navy, accountable, and I have certainly given no reprieve to special interest groups, who exist at the pleasure of politicians, who take from one to give to another, so that others will continue to vote them in office.”

    In concluding his comments, Richardson furthered his point by adding, “When the concentration of government becomes so huge, so powerful, and yet so cumbersome in its ability to provide essential services, it quells the voice of the powerless in this democratic republic of North Carolina. I intend to become elected, and give that voice back to the North Carolinians in this 1st District.”