By Laura Leslie
Raleigh, N.C. — The race for the open House District 49 seat will likely hinge on voters' feelings toward education in North Carolina.
Republican Gary Pendleton seeks to eliminate the state Department of Public Instruction and the main office of the North Carolina Community College System, while Democrat Kim Hanchette said the General Assembly needs to invest more in education.
House District 49 stretches through north-central Raleigh, from Interstate 540 down Glenwood Avenue to Wade Avenue. It leans Republican, but only slightly. The late Rep. Jim Fulghum won the seat in 2012 by 8 percentage points.
Pendleton, a former Wake County commissioner, was sworn in last month to fill out Fulghum’s term and is looking for voters to send him back to the state House for a full two-year term.
“I would like them to know how civically involved I am and how much I care about this state and how much I care about my local community, ” he said.
A retired army brigadier general, Pendleton is a small-business owner who has served on many state and local boards, including WakeMed, the Kiwanis and a stint as the county’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission chairman.
Pendleton says his focus will be “jobs, education and the economy, ” noting that he wants to give state employees a larger raise. Yet, he said he also believes taxes should be cut further, despite growing concerns that the last round of tax cuts may have put a crimp in state revenue.
“The only way we can find that money is to cut out whole programs that we just don’t need anymore, ” he said. “They’re all bloated. There are whole sections of state government that can be done away with.”
For example, he called DPI and the community college system headquarters "a nuisance to our public schools and our community colleges.”
Hanchette, who founded a diabetes education program, has never held elected office before, but she said she decided to become involved after attending some of the "Moral Monday" legislative protests in 2013.
“I was pretty unhappy with the direction that the General Assembly has gone, in terms of mostly education, ” she said. “I just feel like it’s the building block for everything else, in large part.”
Hanchette says her past experience as a PTA president has helped her understand the challenges teachers face in the classroom every day. She says years of tight budgets have left those teachers without the support and materials they need.
