Let Us Not Continue Our Election Mistakes | Eastern North Carolina Now

Let Us Not Continue Our Election Mistakes

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

It seems like we never get rid of those tax and spend politicians who keep pushing socialism while they ignore the US Constitution. They are everywhere, in every school district, every county, every state and the federal government. Unfortunately, there is a self-serving relationship between these elected empty heads and our hired government employees. They feed off each other’s bad ideas.

The 2026 elections provide us with the opportunity to replace these liberals and hopefully they will send signals to their appointees and employees to change direction. The direction of all government can easily be changed by electing conservative, constitutional, free market thinkers. More than two thirds of Beaufort County voters voted conservative during the 2024 elections. Proof of this is they voted for Donald Trump. There is no doubt that he has changed the direction of the federal government. That change is in its infancy. Three years down the road he will have pushed us much closer toward the ideals of the founding fathers.

Nothing has happened to make county and state governments change in the Trump direction. This is because not enough of our elected officials have been replaced with Trumpers.

The closing of the Snowden School tells us that most of those elected to the school board never intended to change anything. Only two newly elected board members had the courage and the strength of character to stand up for Snowden. They are Charles Hickman and Stacey Davis. Four people who represented themselves to be conservative Republicans, RINO’ed (Republican In Name Only) out. They are Donald Shreve, Gary Carlton, Terry Williams, and Daniel Hudson. They drank the cool aid of the school superintendent (The Big Cheese).

DEI is another of those false teachings by the ultra-left wingers in the Democrat Party. DEI says that ability, performance and hard work are not important. Everyone should advance in all aspects of life (teaching, learning, working, military, government and industrial promotions) based on (phony) injustices in their background, their economic position within society and the right to be included whether deserved or not. This is the classical framework laid down by the communists, Marx and Lenin. The Democrats and their ilk forced it upon the education system by using the carrot of federal aid.

The closing of Snowden School may be the last straw in the 60-year-old evolution of school consolidation. Consolidation started out as a good idea. During the early days of consolidation, as the nation grew with advances in technology and transportation, there was money to be saved while providing more professional and a higher level of training by consolidating many small schools. This worked well for about 30 years. Then the leftists, socialists and communists figured out that more consolidation with curriculum control would allow them a huge political advantage. During the past 30 years consolidation has evolved into socialist/communist indoctrination. This is why DEI, CRT and LGBTQ+ have become so prominent in education from kindergarten to the university.

It is no wonder that all of our hired education leadership in Beaufort County is so cozy with LGBTQ+, CRT and DEI. The Big Cheese wrote his doctoral dissertation on DEI. Consolidating these schools moves all parents further from their children and allows children to get lost in larger bureaucracies. Teaching without textbooks removes all parental and public supervision. It is no wonder the public education system is losing teachers and students. They are moving to smaller more transparent schools.

The protection of society from these evil practices is supposed to be provided by the local school board. The Beaufort County School Board is a dismal failure with the exception Stacey Davis and Charles Hickman. The board has handed budgeting over to the Big Cheese. They spend only a few hours on this more than 70 million dollar budget each year. The majority of the board are rubber stamps. The remaining six RINOs, excluding Stacey Davis and Charles Hickman, plus one Democrat spend their time “doing what the Big Cheese tells them to do”. There is no debate and no independent committees examining issues. Ethical conflicts abound. Two board members have husbands who are county commissioners. They vote in lockstep with each other. At least two board members have relatives who are climbing the ladder of success within the school system. One may ask if these board members avoid disagreements with the Big Cheese in order to further their relatives’ careers.

A majority of the County Commissioners supported the school board closing Snowden without any questions. County Commissioners do not have to investigate when they follow the orders of their wives. Power gets easier to wield when two RINOs form a coalition with two Democrats and vote the same way on every issue. That coalition is the “gang of four” (Frankie Waters, Randy Walker, Ed Booth and Jerry Langley). During the past three years the gang of four denied the taxpayers a 10 percent tax reduction, supported the closing of Snowden School, gave more than 4 million dollars to telephone companies for  Obama broadband, consolidated the John Cotton Tayloe School with the  Eastern Elementary School, gave more than one million dollars to their favorite charities, refused to rezone the industrial park at Chocowinity to make it developable, and budgeted to spend several million dollars of increased revenue while claiming they did not increase taxes.

All of these injustices, failures and corruptions were set upon us by persons elected to public office. We can create a fine education system, reduce taxes and the size of county government by simply changing the majority of our elected officials who serve on the school board and County commission. The November 2026 elections are the best opportunity to change county government. Five (the majority) of the nine school board members seats are vacant in 2026. Three commissioner seats are vacant. We will have two conservatives sitting on the board of county commissioners. We need to reelect Stan Deatherage and replace Fake Frankie Waters or Ed Booth with a conservative.

The Conservative Club is seeking candidates to run for office in 2026. In order to run the candidate has to register during December of 2025. The primary is next Spring. In order to run as a Republican, unaffiliated candidates must change their registration to Republican by mid September of 2025 (or 90 days before registering to run for office). Otherwise, unaffiliated candidates have to file a petition to run. It is much easier to run as a member of a political party.

Conservative candidates may contact me or any member of the Conservative Club for political advice. True conservative candidates should contact the Conservative Club before contacting the Beaufort County Republican Party.

Strength of character is one of the essential traits we will consider in supporting candidates. We supported several candidates during the last election and have been very disappointed. Some of them are Randy Walker, Don Shreve, Gary Carlton, and Daniel Hudson.