This Is the Man That Eggers&Aceto Will Hire To Run Watauga Elections

Former GOP Chair (& soon-to-be Elections Director) Matt Snyder

Matt Snyder, past chair of the Watauga GOP, who was pictured in the High Country Press (photo by Lonnie Webster) in March 2014, pushing his partisan opinion that there should be no early voting on the ASU campus.

Did I mention "past chair of the Watauga GOP"?

So the director of the local Board of Elections to replace the fair and impartial Jane Ann Hodges will be a highly partisan political operative who likes getting in people's faces. Why are we not surprised?

Snyder's name was announced by Luke Eggers at the Watauga Board of Elections special meeting this evening. Luke allowed as how he "had been thinking" about a replacement for Director Hodges, and he listed a number of qualifications he had thought about:

a director should be organized
a director should be good with numbers
a director should be able to "put together many things" (model airplanes?)

That was it -- Luke Eggers' job description for the new Director of Elections. Experience? No. Non-partisanship? Absolutely not.

Bill Aceto had no recommendation, making it perfectly clear that he and Eggers had already decided on their guy. As it turned out, Democratic member of the BOE, Kathleen Campbell, came armed with some nine other applications, one of those Republican activist Deborah Greene, whom I would absolutely trust with Watauga County elections. I would. She's incorruptible.

Campbell argued with Eggers and Aceto that there should be a job listing and at least a state-wide search for an experienced elections professional. Eggers and Aceto were having none of that. No, they've had their partisan tool in mind now for weeks.

During public comment, Deborah Greene pointed out that the county website doesn't even list a job opening. Why is that?

Other speakers urged the board to be professional. "Don't make this a partisan appointment," said one speaker.

The presence of Luke Eggers' older brother and ghost writer Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") also drew comment. He has never before, since the advent of Eggers & Aceto, attended a board meeting, and suddenly he was there in his official capacity as county attorney. It was a bit embarrassing, since Four was very publicly outed as his little brother's puppet-master, and it seemed this evening that Luke felt he needed some legal backup.

They didn't vote to install Snyder. They couldn't, because their published agenda for this special meeting did not include an item for action. They'll appoint him at April's meeting, ignoring any other applications and refusing to do a search or even publish a job description.

Someone in the audience at today's meeting said (a great understatement), "They don't even try to cover up what they're doing."

They've got the power. They intend to politicize the Watauga County Board of Elections in ways none of us could have predicted even last year. Who will trust an election outcome in this county in 2016?