Former Sheriff Van Duncan passes write-in threshold to secure ballot spot for chair of Buncombe County Board of Commissioners

Former Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan has cleared a major electoral hurdle in his bid to get on the ballot this fall for the open seat of Buncombe County Board of Commissioners chair.

Running as “unaffiliated,” Duncan surpassed the threshold of signatures needed to get on the ballot — 8,295 – late last week. As of Friday, Duncan had 8,625 certified signatures, according to the Buncombe County Board of Elections.

Duncan, 59, and his team gathered the signatures in 40 days, well ahead of the March 5 deadline, mostly by sending almost 40,000 mailers to unaffiliated or Republican voters in Buncombe who’ve voted in the past three elections. 

Current board member Amanda Edwards, a registered Democrat, is also running for the board chair seat, so Duncan and his team did not target Democrats. Edwards, 46, is the executive director of the A-B Tech Foundation and past executive director of the Western North Carolina Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Duncan served as sheriff from 2006 through 2018 and currently works as an investigator for the Biltmore Estate company police department.

“I’m honored and humbled by the fact that they asked me to be up front in this effort, but I honestly think the reason why we have all this interest, and all this effort behind our petition campaign, is because people were very unsatisfied with the public policies that they’re getting,” Duncan said.

Edwards, who was first elected in 2018, represents District 3 on the Board of Commissioners. Her platform included “restoring trust and accountability to Buncombe County” in the wake of the scandal involving former County Manager Wanda Greene, who was convicted on federal corruption charges. 

On Monday, Edwards said via text she had not personally confirmed with the Board of Elections that Duncan had met the threshold.

“But I am committed to seeking the votes and support of the people of Buncombe County  in November to serve as a proven, trusted leader who will be the first woman chair of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners,” Edwards said.

Van Duncan’s campaign finance report on file with the State Board of Elections shows he has received $40,769 in individual contributions this year and had expenses of $38,101, leaving him with $2,738 in cash on hand. Registered Republican Mike Summey, who spearheaded Duncan’s write-in campaign, said the mailers comprise most of their expenditures so far.

Edwards’ most recent filing shows she has $19,289 in cash on hand. A report for the last six months of 2023 showed Edwards had $14,950 in individual donations.

A large bloc of unaffiliated voters

Buncombe is a Democratic stronghold, but the largest bloc of registered voters is unaffiliated, with 86,547. Registered Democrats total 72,830, Republicans 44,532, Libertarians 1,637, and the Green Party, 77.

All seven members of the Board of Commissioners are Democrats, and Duncan says he believes voters want a different perspective. Duncan won three elections as sheriff running as a Democrat, but he switched to unaffiliated late in his final term, saying he was disillusioned with the far left element of the party, particularly its support of the “Defund the police” movement.

Ben Scales gathered the necessary signatures, then ran and lost running as an unaffiliated candidate for district attorney in 2014.

(He did run in 2018, but that was as a Democrat)

Duncan is just the third candidate in Buncombe County, at least in recent history, who gathered enough signatures as unaffiliated candidates to get on the ballot, according to Buncombe County Board of Elections Director Corinne Duncan. Ben Scales ran unsuccessfully for district attorney as an unaffiliated candidate in 2014, and Nancy Waldrop ran and lost for a County Commission seat in 2014.

The state legislature has made it difficult for unaffiliated candidates to get on the ballot, partly to keep an excessive number of candidates from filing.

Summey said the system is overly onerous.

“Somebody needs to address the issue that the unaffiliated voter is the largest voting bloc in the county, and the state, and they make it so difficult for that group of people to get a candidate on the ballot to represent them,” Summey said.

Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper said it is “impressive (Duncan) has crossed a threshold that most unaffiliated candidates can’t get past, but at the same time, Edwards “has been raising money to win an election.

“He still faces all the old barriers where partisan identification, whether we like it or not, is still the primary driver of vote choice,” Cooper said of Duncan. “And that’s becoming increasingly true, not decreasingly true. So he still faces an uphill battle.”

Cooper is working on a book on North Carolina politics and has a chapter on unaffiliated candidates. Over the past 12 years, Cooper said, the percentage of unaffiliated candidates running for partisan offices has been between 3.5 and 4 percent of all candidates. In other words, fewer than 4 percent of all candidates are unaffiliated.

When they are successful in getting on the ballot, over half run for county commission, then Board of Elections, and the Sheriff’s Office, Cooper said. Scales is the only district attorney candidate ever to run as an unaffiliated candidate, and no one has run statewide for any other offices as an unaffiliated candidate, Cooper said.

“From 2010 to 2022, unaffiliated candidates chalked up 42 victories,” Cooper said. “That’s a 16 percent win percentage. And in 11 of those 42 victories, there were no Democrats or Republicans even on the ballot.”

Part of the problem is that the high number of people registered as unaffiliated doesn’t necessarily translate into votes on election day, Cooper said.

“Van Duncan has high name recognition, but the Democratic Party has a higher name recognition, as does the Republican Party,” Cooper said. “And a lot of these unaffiliated voters are still left leaning or right leaning.  We think of them sometimes as shadow partisans.”

Edwards also has high name recognition from being on the commission, and she’s a strong candidate, Cooper added. Edwards also has the Democratic party working to get her elected.

“There’s nobody doing that for the unaffiliated voters — they are a solo act,” Cooper said. “There’s no natural network. They don’t get any extra squeeze from the juice of the party.”

In all three of his elections as sheriff, Duncan won convincingly. In 2006, he won 57 percent of the vote, compared with 43 percent for his opponent. In 2010, Duncan hit 70 percent, and in 2014 it rose to 72.3 percent of the vote.

Edwards won her seat in 2018 with 55.3 percent of the vote, compared with 44.7 for her opponent.

Cooper says “the odds are infinitesimally small” for Duncan to win as an unaffiliated candidate.

“But some people do make it through, and he is the kind of candidate that would, because he does have a history,” Cooper said. “He’s been on the ballot before. His name is recognized. He’s well networked. If anybody’s got a shot, it’s him.”

Duncan said his campaign will continue to submit signatures up till the deadline.

[Editor’s note: Asheville Watchdog updated the initial version of this story to include information about Duncan’s and Edwards’ most recent campaign finance reports.]

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service please visit avlwatchdog.org/donate.