Seven Years of Roll Calls: Stan Deatherage Kept Voting the Way He Campaigned, and Ed Booth/Randy Walker Majority Kept Voting Against Him | Eastern NC Now

 Every recorded vote below is a roll call printed by name in the minutes of the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners, January 2020 through July 6, 2026, the last meeting the county has published. The August 3 vote is this newspaper’s record of that meeting. The conclusions drawn are this newspaper’s.
On August 3, 2026 the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners made the county a sanctuary for the unborn. The resolution was Commissioner Stan Deatherage’s, item seven on that night’s agenda under his own name, and it rests its case on scripture and on the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which returned the question to the states and, as the resolution puts it, to the counties by association. It passed.
Ed Booth and Randy Walker voted against it.
That vote is the whole argument of this article in a single line. For seven years Deatherage has been the commissioner putting these questions on the agenda, and for seven years the same two colleagues have been voting them down. The county has published no minutes since July 6, 2026, so the August 3 roll call here is this newspaper’s own record of the meeting rather than the clerk’s; every other vote below is taken from the published minutes. Deatherage also brought a second resolution that night, to elect Beaufort County commissioners at-large.
Seven years of county minutes have now been read end to end — eighty-five meetings and three hundred and sixty-nine votes on which the board split and the clerk wrote down every name. Most county business passes without a murmur; it is the divided votes that tell you who somebody is. On those votes a pattern runs through seven years without breaking: Stan Deatherage votes to leave money with the people who earned it, and Ed Booth and Randy Walker vote to spend it. What follows is the case a conservative voter would make from that record, every vote a roll call the county printed itself, dated so anyone can look it up.
The tax rate
Start where a county commissioner has the most direct power over a family’s budget. On April 16, 2022 Deatherage moved to cut the county tax rate by ten percent. It carried. On June 5, 2023 the board cut the ad valorem rate five cents, to 58.5 cents per hundred dollars of value. On June 2, 2025 it voted to reduce taxes another ten percent for a year out of the general fund. On April 6, 2026 it moved the rate toward roughly forty-one cents, on May 11, 2026 it directed a further 7.48 percent, and that same night committed to take another ten cents off the 2026-27 rate. Deatherage voted for every one.
Booth voted for the first two and against the four that followed. Walker voted for all six. A voter is entitled to ask what changed after 2023.
The June 2, 2025 meeting is the one to study, because it shows how a tax cut can be voted and then spent. The board approved the ten percent reduction four to three. Minutes later the chairman moved to add two payroll reclassifications to the same budget. Commissioner Dunn asked where the money would come from. Deatherage answered, “From the tax payers.” The reclassifications were added, and the 2025-2026 budget ordinance was then adopted over Deatherage’s objection, with Booth and Walker voting for it. A rate cut on one page and new recurring salary on the next is how a county ends up back where it started.
The national questions
Beaufort County cannot close the southern border or write election law. What it can do is go on record, and a county that does gives its legislators cover to act. This is where the roll calls get hardest to explain.
On October 2, 2023 the board adopted a Resolution in Defense of These United States’ Sovereign Borders. Booth voted no. On August 7, 2023 Deatherage moved a Resolution in Defense of Election Integrity. Booth voted no. On November 4, 2024 Deatherage moved a resolution supporting House Bill 1074, the Citizens Only voting amendment then on the ballot — a measure stating plainly that only citizens may vote. Booth and Walker both voted no.
On April 4, 2022 the board voted to find out how many undocumented children were drawing county services such as WIC. Booth voted no. On April 7, 2025 it asked the community college to report what county money it had spent on the ICE question, and on November 3, 2025 it invited the Sheriff to tell the board about his own relationship with ICE. Booth voted no to both. Asking a public body what it is doing with public money is not an extreme act.
On December 5, 2022 the board sent a team to Raleigh to lobby for higher fines and longer prison terms and to raise the southern border. Booth voted no. On May 1, 2023 it opposed removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery, a monument raised in 1914 and unveiled by a sitting president. Booth and Walker both voted no.
Drugs
The clearest single test in the whole record is a resolution asking the legislature to put serious prison time behind selling illegal drugs. Commissioner Richardson brought it on January 5, 2026 and it failed on a tie, with Booth and Walker against. He brought it back on April 6, and Booth voted no. He brought it back on May 11, and Booth voted no. He brought it back on June 1, and it finally carried five to one — Booth alone against. Deatherage voted for it all four times.
Four votes, one man standing against each time, on a resolution that costs the county nothing and asks Raleigh to be harder on the people selling poison in Beaufort County.
What the college does with county money
On October 7, 2024 the board asked Beaufort County Community College to stop hosting a student club on campus. The argument made on the floor was about public funding rather than private association: Richardson said he was not trying to keep anyone from meeting, but that it is inappropriate to use public money to promote advocacy to students. That motion carried, with Deatherage, Booth and Walker all voting for it.
On January 5, 2026 the board went to the budget question directly and moved not to fund the LGBTQ club or Turning Point USA at the college in the coming year — both of them, the conservative group included. It failed on a tie. Booth and Walker voted no.
Following the money
Fiscal conservatism is mostly unglamorous, and this is where Deatherage spends most of his votes. On November 1, 2021 Richardson moved that a county contract go to the lowest bidder. Deatherage seconded. It failed, with Booth and Walker against. On January 3, 2022 Deatherage moved to film the commissioners’ planning retreat so the public could watch; Booth voted no. On July 6, 2021 he voted to hold a contract until a possible conflict of interest was confirmed; Booth voted no. On January 5, 2026 he voted to require an itemised statement with every invoice before the county pays it; Booth and Walker both voted no.
And on May 12, 2025, when Richardson moved a forensic audit of the Beaufort County Schools’ finances, Booth and Walker voted it down. Deatherage was absent that night and cast no vote, which this newspaper notes rather than counts.
The schools
Beaufort County Schools absorb the largest share of county money, and the board’s majority has been reliably generous with it. Deatherage voted against twelve additional School Resource Officers in December 2023, against buying four acres beside the schools for half a million dollars in January 2025, and against releasing $614,792 for playground equipment in May 2026. Booth and Walker voted for all three.
Those are not votes against children. They are votes for asking what a thing costs before buying it — the same instinct behind the forensic audit the majority refused.
What the other side would say
Fairness requires the rest. Booth and Walker both backed Deatherage’s ten percent cut in 2022 and the five-cent cut in 2023, and Walker has been with him on most of the border and election resolutions. A no vote on a bundled motion is not always a no on everything in it. Neither has been asked in print to explain these votes; both are invited to, at any length, and this newspaper will print the answer unedited.
The question on the ballot
Nobody has to accept this newspaper’s reading of these votes. The names are printed in the county’s own minutes and the dates are above. What a voter should do is read them and decide which of these men has been voting the way he said he would.
Commentary, and labelled as such. Votes are taken from the minutes of the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners as published by the county; scanned minutes were read by optical character recognition, every roster read a second time by a separate method and the two compared, and a sample checked by eye against the page. An absence or a recusal is stated, never counted as a vote. Any error of fact will be corrected in print.See less