Secretary of State makes campaign stop in Rowan County

SALISBURY — Elaine Marshall, the North Carolina secretary of state, made a stop in Rowan County on Saturday for her re-election campaign, speaking to local Democrats about the duties of her office and why she believed she is the best fit for the job.

Marshall appeared at the monthly Rowan County Democratic Party breakfast on Saturday as part of her campaign. She is running for re-election against Republican Party nominee Chad Brown, current chairman of the Gaston County Board of Commissioners.

She took the opportunity to explain what exactly the secretary of state office does, speak about her experience running against NASCAR legend Richard Petty in 1996 and answer voter’s questions about the state and national elections.

In 1996, Marshall was completing her first term as a state senator, which she had chosen to run for because she said she had made repeated trips to Raleigh to speak with officials about policy changes that she believed to be made, only for her concerns to be ignored once she had left Raleigh.

“They’d sit in their office and go, ‘yeah, you’re right. I agree with you,’ and then they’d go out on the floor and vote exactly the opposite. Either they lied or they didn’t understand what I was saying. It didn’t make any difference, I decided I was going to run. If I couldn’t influence a vote, I was going to be a vote,” said Marshall.

When the secretary of state primaries rolled around, Marshall said that she decided to run because the Democratic Party was looking for females who were potential fits. Before she won the primary that year, the Democrats had never nominated a woman for statewide office. Her reward for winning the primary was a chance to face Petty in the November election.

“(Petty) was my first opponent and nobody gave me a chance. I’m one of those people, you underestimate me and you better watch out,” said Marshall.

Marshall would go on to defeat Petty with 53.48 percent of the vote to Petty’s 45.17, making her the first woman elected to statewide office in North Carolina. Since then, several other female politicians have joined the council of state, including former Governor Bev Purdue, the first female governor of North Carolina, and current Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt.

Marshall also spoke on Saturday about what role the Department of the Secretary of the State holds in North Carolina.

“The secretary of state’s mission is to promote economic development, the formation of capital, we have some consumer protection in there and to promote e-commerce among government-to-government and then citizen business-to-government,” said Marshall.

Marshall noted that cyber-security and customer service were two of the main aspects of those duties that she worked on.

“People ask me, ‘what’s my biggest worry at night?’ Cyber-security, that always has to be the No. 1 worry. The next worry is customer service, serving people, meeting them where they are. When people come to us they want to form a corporation, they want to be a notary, they want to have an opportunity for investment. They are putting their hopes and dreams on the line, and it’s our job to move that electronic paperwork efficiently and get them to the starting gate,” said Marshall.

Part of her work to improve upon those aspects while in office, Marshall said, was the Rural RISE NC initiative, which works to provide people in all areas of the state access to mentors, contact and assistance that is specific to the county they are in instead of Raleigh-based. She said that the initiative is aimed at bridging the urban-rural economic divide, which she said she was passionate about because she grew up on a rural family farm in Maryland and understood what “it felt like to feel like you’re disadvantaged because you’re far away from government or that you’re small and nobody cares.”

Marshall is being challenged by Republican nominee Brown, a former mayor of Stanley and the chairman of the Gaston County Board of Commissioners. Brown’s priorities, as listed on his website, are to protect “elections and ensure that every vote is counted,” to “promote innovation and small business growth,” and to “protect our consumers from fraud and identity theft.”

“I like to think my calling here is to fight for the common person to help give them some direction through a cumbersome government. Working in economic development and being involved in many other facets of local government has groomed me to want more,” Brown wrote on his campaign website.

North Carolina is one of 12 states in the country where the secretary of state does not oversee the elections in the state.

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