One Democrat and one Republican won the two open seats on the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners. The race for the two seats turned out to be the one nail-biter that couldn’t be called until the very last precinct in New Hanover County reported its results.
Republican Skip Watkins led the pack from the beginning and kept his lead throughout the night.
He looks forward, he says, to seeing the County’s Special Use Permit modified.
"The process is laborious and expensive. And we need jobs. We don’t have enough middle-America jobs in New Hanover County and southeastern North Carolina. We need manufacturing. There’s not a lot here, but we need what we can get. I’m a big fan of pharma. I have some friends in the pharma industry. I’d love to see New Hanover County become a little pharma zone."
Republican Derrick Hickey and Democrat Rob Zapple traded number-two spots, then tied in a dead heat, with Hickey pulling ahead towards the end of the night. But when the 43rd of 43 precincts reported, Zapple suddenly swept past Hickey by a slim 211 votes.
One of his top agenda items, says Zapple, is financial support for public education:
"That would be everything from fully funding our pre-K curriculum all the way up through the two-year certification programs offered by Cape Fear Community College – making sure they work with GE and Corning and other manufacturers here so that when people from the outside look in, they see that we have the high-skilled work force, the educational foundation that we have to create a terrific environment for hiring here. "
Watkins and Zapple replace Commissioners Tom Wolfe and Brian Berger whose terms expire this year.
