Buncombe County Commissioner and Asheville businessman David Young says he’s running for state treasurer.
You heard that right. Earlier in the year, Young had been testing the waters for a statewide run against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Young ditched that thought pretty quickly – in a first run for statewide office, Dole would have been a tough nut to crack politcally and financially.
Young sees opportunity, though, in the state treasurer office. Nobody’s come out running hard for that seat, which is opening up because Richard Moore is running for governor. And Young says he has a business and finance background perfect for the job.
Young, 47, co-owns Fugazy Travel with his wife and has been a county commissioner for nearly 16 years. He’ll be president of the statewide N.C. Association of County Commissioners next year and goes to Raleigh regularly to lobby state lawmakers on behalf of the counties. He also serves on the UNC Board of Governors, where he says he does a lot of business and finance work for that board.
After 16 years in local office, Young is clearly ready for a step up and has decided this is the race for him. We’ll be watching closely.
Young is joining an already crowded field of potential candidates for the Council of State office. Wikipedia has this list of people:
State Sen. Janet Cowell (Democratic)
State Rep. Bill Daughtridge (Republican)
State Rep. Dale Folwell (Republican)
State Rep. Jim Harrell (Democratic)
Chris Mintz (Democratic)
Carranza Pryor (Democratic)
Michael Weisel (Democratic)
Go here to read more about the potential candidates.
David Young’s decision will have interesting implications for the race for the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, because he’s said he won’t be running for re-election to that office. Billy Stanley, who’s in his 70s and has been threatening to retire for years, may finally beg off. And commissioners David Gantt and Nathan Ramsey will be fighting it out for chairman. (Ramsey is chairman now.) So we could have a vastly different board of commissioners come next November.
Expect more news like this as we head into August and September. 2008 is going to be a huge election year, and people will start making their intentions clear sooner rather than later.
1 Comment
we moved this post and lost comments from scrutiny hooligans and drama queen. screwy said the commissioners race will be the hottest we’ve seen in years, and drama said that max haner is thinking about running for the board of commissioners.