Posted on Wed, May. 03, 2006

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CABARRUS COUNTY COMMISSIONER

Newcomer leads GOP candidates

White ahead of Privette, Mynatt, Freeman in tight race

VICTORIA CHERRIE AND LENA WARMACK

vcherrie@charlotteobserver.comlwarmack@charlotteobserver.com

The throwdown among eight Republican candidates over nominations to three open seats on the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners ended with one longtime board member being bounced and one new face in the ring.

Jay White, a Concord lawyer and political newcomer, was the top vote-getter with 2,623 votes, according to unofficial totals with all precincts reported.

Not yet counted at press time were 562 one-stop early voting ballots, 40 absentee ballots and an undetermined number of provisional ballots.

Those votes could change the outcome for Grace Mynatt, a county school board member and retired teacher, who squeaked by incumbent Robert Freeman into third place with 1,989 votes to his 1,962.

White outpolled longtime Commissioner Coy Privette, a former state legislator who came in second with 2,291 votes.

"I'm going to keep on keeping on, to continue to reflect the sentiment of citizens across Cabarrus County, principle above expediency," Privette said Tuesday night.

Problems with a machine jam at the precinct at Family of Faith Lutheran Church caused a recount and delayed the reporting of some results.

Cabarrus was one of several counties in the region to use new voting machines Tuesday. Touch screens were used in the Board of Elections office, and voters used new optical scan equipment in the precincts. With the optical scan machines, voters used a pen to mark choices on a ballot, which was then tallied in the precinct by a tabulation machine.

It's unclear whether there will be a runoff election. A runoff primary would be May 30.

Incumbent Commissioner Carolyn Carpenter has struggled in past primary elections. Tuesday she garnered 1,260 votes, coming in seventh place, just ahead of Marlynn Burns, an Odell resident and a leader of that community's incorporation drive, who got 1,151votes.

"I'll keep working as hard as I can until December," Carpenter said. "We still got a lot of work to do, and we'll see what happens in two years." Carpenter said she appreciates all the voters who turned out.

The newly nominated Republicans will face Democratic candidates Allison Kitfield and Steve Baldon in the Nov. 7 general election.

Kitfield, a community college registrar, popped onto the public radar during public meetings about the new jail in downtown Concord. Baldon is a front-line leader at Philip Morris U.S.A. Neither has prior political experience.

Larry Griffin, a retired Air Force colonel, got 1,815 votes. Richard Suggs, a self-employed contractor, got 1,442.

Officials estimated 8.2 percent of the 91,000 registered voters in Cabarrus County turned out for the primaries.

The issues in Cabarrus are exploding growth, the need for a bigger jail, overcrowded schools and the need for money to build new ones.