I’ve posted the endorsement sheets of the Democrat and Republican parties of Gaston County below. If you vote based on the (D) and the (R) on the ballot, I hope you will find having this information available helpful.
There’s certainly some advantage to knowing which party if any a candidate is registered with, if you assume they will always vote the party line and that the party platform is relevant to decisions that impact Ranlo. For reference you can find the Democrat’s Platform here and the Republican’s Platform here. I’ve read through both platforms and found myself agreeing and disagreeing with some of the core tenets of both parties. What I did not find is guidance on the challenges facing Ranlo.
If you’ve been following my campaign, I hope I’ve successfully conveyed that my decisions and my vote aren’t decided by the platform of any major political party but by a careful examination of the facts and the data and considering all sides of a disagreement. I’ve taken a look at past votes by the Ranlo Commissioners and stated how I would have voted here.
I challenge every voter in Ranlo to ignore party when voting this Tuesday. Part of my encouragement is selfish. If Ranlo votes along party lines I have no chance of winning. The voters in the last municipal election broke down as 161 Democrats, 203 Republicans, and 115 independent according to the data available from the NCSBE Assuming there’s similar turnout this election, I don’t have a realistic chance if votes break along party lines.
More importantly, partisanship is not what Ranlo needs. The current board has worked together for the last 2 years regardless of party to take action to start solving some of the problems that troubled Ranlo. We need more of this going forward. A return to a leadership divided by partisanship can only lead to a regression in progress.
This doesn’t mean that there should always be agreement on all issues. I’m personally wary of any candidate that seemingly agrees with everything that people say. Disagreement is healthy when it makes people consider viewpoints and solutions they may not have thought of themselves. I hope that nobody in Ranlo eliminates a candidate, me or others, from consideration because they disagree on a single issue. Please look at who will represent you the best as the sum of their viewpoints.
As a final thought, I encourage everyone in Ranlo to take the time to vote. Turnout for our municipal elections is embarrassingly low. This means that very few people had their say in the future of the town they live in. Its important to vote and I’ve gone in to greater detail on its personal meaning to me elsewhere on my website.
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