Stuart: Still in race for mayor
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on October 11, 2015 1:50 AM
D.A. Stuart
Despite getting the least number of votes in Goldsboro's Oct. 6 mayoral primary election, D.A. Stuart announced this week that he intends to run a write-in campaign in the general election on Nov. 3.
Henry Jinnette, who received the second least number of votes in the primary election, will not be running a write-in campaign.
Stuart made the announcement of his intention to run as a write-in candidate on his campaign website this week, acknowledging that he lost the primary election, but stating that he is "not a quitter," and that he is "not giving up on Goldsboro and I hope they won't give up on me."
Stuart said he is running because the choice of mayoral candidates in the Nov. 3 general election as decided by the popular vote results of the primary election gives citizens two candidates to choose from who are troublesome to him.
He discredited 21-year-old candidate Myelle Thompson's chances of winning the election because of his age, while making a barrage of claims against current Mayor Pro-Tem Chuck Allen, who was the top vote-getter with 1,178 votes.
Thompson received 218 votes in the primary election, compared to Stuart's 155 votes and Jinnette's 157 votes.
"Myelle is a good kid, but that's what he is -- a kid," Stuart said.
Stuart also said he noticed that Allen was recently appointed to the North Carolina Military Affairs Commission, but said he believed the appointment was a move for political gain since elections are under way and that "Chuck (Allen) has never spent a day of his life in the military."
Then Stuart went on to say he has a "conspiracy theory" about Allen that he has threatened city employees during his time as a council member to secure the votes of city employees.
He said he suspected that if he became mayor, city employees would be coming to his office to complain about things Allen has either said or done to them during his tenure on the Goldsboro City Council.
Stuart doubled down on that theory in a post to his campaign website blog -- www.voteforgoldsboro.com -- writing, "...If any of the city employees have been abused, threatened, coerced, overlooked etc. in every department, I am sure will each have an earful to complain about, and that they would be more than happy to come forward and report any wrong doings, to the point of tripping over themselves to do so, since they won't have to worry about retaliation or revenge anymore."
He also said, after looking at the primary election results, it is "obvious that Chuck is going to cream him (Thompson)" in the general election, even though Stuart received 63 fewer votes than Thompson.
Since Jinnette will not be running as a write-in candidate in the general election, Stuart said he feels he will be able to make up the disparity in numbers and surpass Thompson's vote count because he thinks the 157 voters who cast ballots for Jinnette in the primary election will in turn cast a vote for Stuart in the general election.
There were a total 1,727 ballots cast in this year's primary election. Once added up, the total number of votes cast for the four candidates listed on the primary ballot comes to 1,708 -- 19 votes short of the total number of votes cast.
Wayne County Board of Elections Deputy Director Beverly York said there were no write-in candidates reported during the mayoral primary, meaning the 19 lingering votes most likely indicated 19 people who chose not to vote for anybody at all in the mayoral primary.
Board of Elections officials said that since Stuart had filed the appropriate campaign finance documents during his run for mayor leading up to the primary election, he will not need to do so again after making the announcement that he intends to run as a write-in candidate for the general election.