Rogue volunteer sabotages NC third political party
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN)– While some political parties are scrambling to get enough signatures to be recognized in North Carolina, another has had its own setback.
The Veterans Party of NC has a set of principles that focus on the founding fathers’ intent when they wrote the constitution, like the separation of church and state. It also believes in a republic where citizens can freely vote for the best candidate rather than a party.
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“That’s what we’re mainly looking for, is people that are centrist and that are anchored either a couple of spaces to the left or a couple of spaces to the right- but generally in the center,” said Veterans Party of NC executive director James Bledsoe.
Like other third parties, they also believe Americans are tired of democrats and republicans running the show, and what that show now looks like.
“We are just tired of the mud slinging. We want to go back to a little bit of civility. We understand that that existed at one point,” said Bledsoe.
The lack of civility is exactly what Bledsoe said his party recently faced after a volunteer had ulterior motive as he helped gather the number of signatures needed by June 1 to become a recognized party in North Carolina.
“We had a little bit of sabotage. Someone burned 10,000 of our signatures. He was our point of contact for our signature drive. We turned all of our signatures over to him and he was going to mail them out to the individual Board of Elections in each county. What we ended up finding out was he burned them, left the state and just send us a picture and left it at that,” he said.
Which means the focus is now on the long game.
“We’re just going to keep plugging away at this for as long as we can. It took 40 plus years for the Libertarian Party to get recognized and do their thing. So, that’s kind of our road map. We’re not disheartened. We just know it’s going to be a very, very long run,” said Bledsoe.
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