Video from the Candidate's Forum | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    The Washington Daily News and the Washington/Beaufort County Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Candidates' Forum Tuesday night at Beaufort County Community College. About a hundred people, other than candidates, attended and heard Bill Cook, running for Senate District 1, Paul Tine running for House 6 along with Mattie Lawson were the only state level candidates to attend. Most of the evening was consumed by County Commissioner candidates, followed by three school board candidates. Kellie Hopkins, Director of the Beaufort County Board of Elections moderated.
Candidates for the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners (from left to right) Robert Belcher, Wayne Sawyer (speaking), Hood Richardson, Carolyn Harding, Jay McRoy, Dondi Dixon, Jerry Langley: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    We have video of the presentations below:

The first clip is for Senate District 1 which includes all of Beaufort County. Bill Cook, from Beaufort is running against Stan While, a Democrat from Dare County who did not attend.


The second clip features Mattie Lawson and Paul Tine who are running for the House 6 seat. Most of the northern part of Beaufort County, plus Gilead Precinct, is in House 6, while the remainder is in House 3.


The next clip begins the County Commissioner presentations. Eight candidates, four from each party, are running to fill four seats. The top four vote getters win with each voters getting one vote.



    In the first clip you see part of a major blunder made by the moderator. Mr. Brinn began his session at 12:15 into the video. At 13:40 into the clip candidate he announced that he is opposed to Limited Voting. He then turns to ask Hood Richardson "...what his opinion is on Limited Voting..." at 14:00, with only 15 seconds remaining he then yields the remainder of his time for Hood to respond. Hood gets up and begins to respond and Kellie Hopkins cuts him off. He protests this and says "why? The time's not up..." But Mrs. Hopkins is adamant and shuts him down. Hood yields, while Brinn's supporters laugh about it. What you need to know to understand this imbroglio is that a timekeeper from the WDN was sitting on the front row, visible to the candidates. The time keeper holds up a yellow card when 30 seconds remained and then a red card with 15 seconds remains. When the time expires, he rings a bell. You cannot see the timekeeper in the video but you can hear him ring the bell in several other instances. But there is no bell during this exchange. You can hear on the video that there is no bell. But Mrs. Hopkins adamantly cuts Mr. Richardson off and will not allow him to answer Mr. Brinn's question. After the session ended Mrs. Hopkins apologized to Mr. Richardson. Hood told us: "I thought it was improper for the moderator to not allow me to answer the question since Mr. Brinn yielded his time to me and the time had not expired. I would welcome a debate with Mr. Brinn on the topic of Limited Voting, because he obviously does not know what he's talking about and needs to learn something about it before he goes off on a tangent and speculates about what the County should do. I'll be willing to meet him and just he and I have a debate on this or any other issue he wishes to debate. All I would ask is that it be video recorded and played for the public to see."

The next clip is a continuation of the previous one above:


The third County Commissioner clip is below:



The fourth clip is the final one for the Commissioners, and will likely be the most interesting one:


   The last two clips are of the three candidates for the School Board. The first one contains an explanation of how this race is structured by Kellie Hopkins. Carolyn Walker talks about "caring" about our schools. But we mourn the fact that of the four seats, only two of them are contested and we note that Mac Hodges did not "care" enough to show up to explain his leadership, or lack thereof of our school board.



The second clip is simply a continuation: