Watauga GOP Busily Eating Its Young

There's no more popular Republican office-holder in Watauga County than Sheriff Mark Shook. He's received nationwide attention for cleaning up an epidemic of meth labs. He's young and graced with all the benefits and some of the problems of youth.

So naturally the local Republican Party power-structure wants to destroy him. Led by ex-Sheriff Red Lyons, the party has recruited Joe Moody to bring down Shook in a primary. In a profile article in today's Watauga Democrat, Moody says "he wasn't interested in negative campaigning."

Moody may think so, but the people pulling his strings have a tremendous appetite for the negative and have already been trotting round their little scandal xeroxes for months now. Some old hands in this county say the ex-sheriff has a grudge against Shook for rather complicated reasons, but factored in is the embarrassment that the ex-sheriff had allowed the meth epidemic to get a good foothold in the county during his 20-year tenure in office. Shook, his former deputy, showed him up immediately upon assuming the office late in 2002.

Also factoring in was Shook's not-so-secret support for Democratic county commission candidates in 2004. But considering the way the Republican commission had treated him, what did they expect?

Whatever. The Democrats have recruited their own strong candidate for Sheriff, to face either Shook or Moody, whoever survives the internecine conflict on the Republican side ... L.D. Hagaman, who has worked as both a sheriff's deputy and as a Boone police officer and police administrator. He was also Boone town manager and then worked as director of public works for the city of Lenoir ... among many other qualifications.

There's been a veritable tsunami of filings today at the local Board of Elections:

L.D. Hagaman (D)... Sheriff
Mark Shook (R) ... Sheriff (incumbent)
Joe Moody (R) ... Sheriff

Cullie Tarleton (D)... NC House
Gene Wilson (R) ... NC House (incumbent)
Dan Hense (R) ... NC House

John Cooper (D) ... County Commission Dist. 4
David Triplett (R) ... County Commission Dist. 4

Mary Moretz (D) ... County Commission Dist. 1
Keith Honeycutt (R) ... County Commission Dist. 1 (incumbent)

James Coffey (R) ... County Commissioner Dist. 2

Glenn Hodges (D) ... Clerk of Superior Court (incumbent)

Ron Henries (R) ... School Board

The other Republican primary (so far), Dan Hense's challenge to Gene Wilson for the NC House seat that Wilson has been glued to since approximately the cooling of the earth's crust, perhaps deserves passing comment, since until rather recently Hense was a registered Democrat. He's run twice before for this house seat as a Democrat and has not appeared to grow significantly from the experience. His switch to the Republican Party sort of suggests an evolutionary regression. Now he's Gene Wilson's annoyance.