Blue Ridge Parkway Pisgah Inn owner O'Connell makes Buncombe Commission ballot; Who is he?

ASHEVILLE – Blue Ridge Parkway's Pisgah Inn owner and former Republican congressional candidate Bruce O’Connell will battle for a spot on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, after eclipsing the number of signatures required to qualify as an unaffiliated candidate.

O’Connell, 69, will compete in the Nov. 5 general election with incumbent Democrat Terri Wells to represent Buncombe’s second district, which covers the northern and western portions of the county. Wells did not face a primary challenger.

Unaffiliated candidates must gather signatures from 4% of district voters to qualify, according to state law. Buncombe County Director of Elections Corinne Duncan told the Citizen Times March 14 that O’Connell gathered 2,752 valid signatures. He needed 2,628 voters to sign his petition by March 5 to move forward.

O’Connell, a Candler resident, told the Citizen Times March 15 that he deployed a grassroots strategy to collect the signatures, knocking on doors, deputizing family and friends to help and stationing himself at the Weaverville Community Center to recruit early voters for his petition.

“Let’s face it, it was a Herculean task. It was amazing that I pulled it off,” he said.

O’Connell was not the only county commission candidate to petition onto the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate. Former Sheriff Van Duncan qualified for an opportunity to compete for the board chair, after collecting 9,524 signatures. He will face Democrat Amanda Edwards, who currently represents the county’s third district. Duncan was aided by a mailing campaign, which cost him most of the $40,769.10 he raised.

The process left O’Connell with a bad taste in his mouth. He said the 4% registered voter requirement was too high and declared the time constraint posed by the primary deadline too stringent. Candidates who run on a North Carolina party ticket do not need to petition onto the ballot. If O’Connell ran as a write-in candidate, he would have needed to collect 100 signatures to compete in the general election.

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“It just doesn’t make good sense,” he said. “Denying people who want to run the ability to be on the ballot and making it super hard to get on the ballot doesn’t seem right to me and it needs to be changed.”

O’Connell said he is a fiscal conservative who believes in supporting law enforcement, planning for the future and protecting the environment, mentioning the car he drives that runs on wasted french fry oil. He said he would focus on property taxes, sewer, water, the county budget, climate and homelessness.

While he was ready to share his opinions on North Carolina balloting, voters will need to wait for his plan for Buncombe.

“Those are the generalities that I will work towards at this point,” O’Connell said about his basic platform. “But to get into specifics right now, I can just tell you I'm not prepared to do that, but I will be soon.”

O’Connell lost a 2022 Congressional bid to current Rep. Chuck Edwards, who narrowly ousted then incumbent Madison Cawthorn. O'Connell finished in fourth place, earning 6.8% of the vote, 23,459 votes behind the winner, Edwards.

O’Connell said he left the Republican Party because he did not want to run on the GOP’s most extreme national policy positions, pointing to abortion as an example. He is “pro-life,” but believes there should be exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. O’Connell later acknowledged that there are discrepancies within the Republican Party about the topic.

“I am no longer a Republican, but I consider myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” he said.

Switching to unaffiliated allowed him appeal to the largest demographic of voters in the county, he said. More than 41% of voters in the second district are unaffiliated, county records show. Democrats and Republicans comprise 28% and 29% of the district respectively.

O’Connell will face Wells, 52, on Nov. 5. Wells, who lives in Sandy Mush, defeated Republican Glenda Weinert by more than 20% of the vote in 2020 in what was previously Buncombe’s first district, before a recent gerrymander.

Wells told the Citizen Times March 16 that she focused on broadband expansion, conservation and supporting public schools in her initial campaign, all areas that have seen growth under her watch. Buncombe is approaching its goal of conserving 20% of its land. The county has deployed state and federal funding to expand connectivity through rural Buncombe. Education spending in the county has increased 28% in the past two years, though the county’s recurring expense growth is outpacing its revenue growth, which means commissioners will need to make difficult decisions in the upcoming budget cycle.

If she wins reelection, Wells said she plans to focus on infrastructure, community safety, supporting farmers and small business, prioritizing public schools. She said commissioners use the budget to prioritize spending in the county.

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Wells described a grassroots campaign strategy, hosting community meetings throughout her district. Her most recent campaign finance documents, filed Feb. 25, show she has $23,716.66 on hand. She said she was not sure how she would spend the money.

O’Connell’s most recent publicly available campaign finance report, from early December, showed that he made a $1,000 contribution to his own campaign. He told the Citizen Times that he spent the money on “palm cards” with his picture and website.

O’Connell has shown the ability to fundraise and the willingness to spend his own money before. Federal election reports show that he loaned more than $1.1 million to his own Congressional campaign and raised $60,034.25 from contributors. He ended up paying himself back $762,697.04, spending the difference mostly on advertising, as well as a few consultants.

O’Connell expressed a desire to debate Wells, which she said she is going to “take into consideration.”

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Mitchell Black covers Buncombe County and health care for the Citizen Times. Email him at mblack@citizentimes.com or follow him on Twitter @MitchABlack. Please help support local journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Pisgah Inn owner Bruce O'Connell makes Buncombe Commissioner ballot