NEW HANOVER COUNTY — The New Hanover County Board of Elections is poised to lose all Republican representation come December, with county commissioners also shifting to a blue majority. It’s the first time in more than four years these two boards will be controlled by Democrats.
“I believe that change is coming,” newly elected LaShonda Wallace told Port City Daily. Wallace is also the first Black woman to be elected to the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners. “I really feel encouraged because I think we have a community that believes that everyone deserves to feel safe, everyone deserves to be able to afford to live where they also work. I believe we have a community that believes that everyone should have access to opportunity, and so I’m really encouraged and it is exciting to be a part of change.”
A nurse practitioner, Wallace was the second-place vote-getter with 26.29%, behind her Democratic colleague and incumbent commissioner Rob Zapple.
Zapple took away 28.97% of the vote and earned a fourth term, while the board’s current chair, Republican LeAnn Pierce fell into third place and off the board. Pierce did not respond to Port City Daily’s interview request. The Republicans that remain are Bill Rivenbark and Dane Scalise, should his loss to Tim Merrick for the District 20 state House seat be sustained at Friday’s canvass.
Wallace told Port City Daily she is looking forward to a Democratic majority — a first since Jonnathon Barfield and Julia Olson-Boseman were on the board with Zapple in 2022; however, Olson-Boseman switched parties to the GOP before leaving office. Wallace said she also is excited to help elect Zapple as “the chair that he deserves to be.”
The commissioner-elect believes the entire board will have more in common than expected, but hopes the Democratic majority will open the county back up to regional and City of Wilmington collaboration. In recent years, the city and county have had friction in areas like housing, homelessness and transportation, with the county pulling out of several joint ventures with the city.
Zapple told Port City Daily he was feeling “joyous” after his win and excited about the shared values he and his Democratic colleagues, including sitting Commissioner Stephanie Walker, were bringing to the board: “clean drinking water, full funding for public schools and protection of the coastal environment.”
Zapple also plans to dig into the county’s budget and “make sure the county lives within its means.” However, he said the county cannot continue “borrowing money” to balance the budget, referring to the use of fund balance, debt capacity and Revenue Stabilization Fund, a pot of money created with $300 million from the 2021 sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant Health.
In the last budget cycle, Zapple pushed for the commissioners to set a tax rate that covers the county’s departmental expenses without offsets from funds with finite amounts in them.
Both Wallace and Zapple expressed concerns about budget-making being restricted by the successful constitutional amendment allowing the North Carolina General Assembly to place a cap on how much municipalities can collect in property taxes. The cap percentage has yet to be determined; additionally, it is unclear if the state Democrats, with their recent gains in the legislature, will move forward with the restriction at all.
Wallace was hopeful state Democrats would understand how a property tax restriction would hamstring local governments’ ability to fund services. Property taxes are the largest revenue source in New Hanover County’s general fund.
“We are an economic engine — New Hanover County in southeast North Carolina — I just think there is a better way to do things, especially when it comes to our money: Make sure the citizens of New Hanover County get the services that they deserve and they have been asking for and making sure that our departments are fully funded,” Zapple said.
A commissioner board more favorable to tax increases for additional school funding could bode well for the incoming school board.
Four Democrats were elected last Tuesday for the New Hanover County School Board, including Jerry Jones Jr. (14.44%), Brittnei LaRue (14.43%), Margie Gewirtzman (13.95%) and Wendy Dale (12.23%). They pushed out the four Republican candidates, including incumbents Pat Bradford and Josie Barnhart, both of whom were unavailable for an interview with Port City Daily Monday.
Chair Pete Wildeboer also did not seek reelection. At the board’s Nov. 5 meeting, Wildeboer thanked district staff, students and his fellow board members for their dedication to education.
Wildeboer also thanked Superintendent Chris Barnes, saying his leadership of the district is second to none and Barnes is a big part of his legacy as a school board member.
Republican Melissa Mason, who did not win a fourth spot in the primary, is also leaving the board.
The four elected Democrats will join Democrat Judy Justice, who failed to advance in the county commissioner primary earlier this year, and David Perry, who switched his party affiliation from Republican to Libertarian in March.
As for the seventh member of the board, the Democratic Party will be able to seat another representative should Tim Merrick be declared the winner in the District 20 North Carolina House race against Republican county commissioner Dane Scalise.
Only 101 votes separated the two candidates after Election Night and more than 1,000 provisional ballots have yet to be counted, though not all of these will pertain to District 20. The results will be certified on Friday, Nov. 13, at the election canvass.
Democratic Party Chair Jill Hopman told Port City Daily the party is waiting to begin the search for a replacement after Merrick is confirmed. She said the party will discuss the process at its Nov. 16 County Executive Committee meeting and then vote on the replacement at the December regular meeting.
Hopman added the appointee likely won’t be seated until January, while their colleagues are scheduled for swearing in on Dec. 1 because Merrick likely won’t resign until the legislature is set to convene in January.
The Democratic Party had a rough school board campaign year after criminal activity arose in relation to two candidates. Rick Southerland won the fourth spot in the Democratic primary in March but a day after reports dropped that he was living with a registered sex offender; he was replaced with the fifth-place finisher, Margie Gewirtzman, who did not respond to Port City Daily’s Monday interview request.
In May, the Democratic Party chose not to endorse Dale after the unearthing of prior criminal convictions Hopman said the party did not know about. Dale said she told Hopman about her most serious conviction — stalking and communicating threats — shortly after filing for candidacy in December 2025, despite not disclosing all the convictions on a candidate questionnaire.
On Monday, Dale told Port City Daily she was confident in the “blue wave” overtaking the school board this year, but became less so after the lack of endorsement.
“I felt like the entire thing was a negative stain on the party and I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Dale said.
However, Dale said the rejection actually caused some people to support her even more. She said she ensured she had enough yard signs and literature to keep up with other candidates and made a point to attend many events and maintain a social media presence.
She doesn’t believe her rift with the party will influence the working relationships with the incoming board.
“It becomes about doing what is in the interest of the schools, the students, the families, and the community and I am trusting that the board does not let these past differences get in the way of that,” she said.
Dale, Jones and LaRue all told Port City Daily they were in learning mode as they prepared to take office; they’re all first-timers coming to the board so there will be a learning curve.
LaRue thought the current board and Superintendent Chris Barnes had been doing good work in mending trust with New Hanover County Schools families and commended the Finance, Capital and Bond committee’s work.
One of LaRue’s priorities is to examine the school’s current partnerships with nonprofits to analyze where the district is duplicating services and if there is an opportunity for additional partnerships.
“I did talk to The Endowment at one point to understand a little bit better what they’re doing, but they do want to see us collaborate more with the community, throughout the community, to look for us to collaborate across issues, and we’re going to need that because you know students in schools, you know their issues are not in a vacuum,” LaRue said.
Jones and Dale noted the budget would be a major part of their first year in office. Superintendent Barnes consistently states the district is operating at “subsistence level,” even with increased funding from the county commissioners.
Though the school board may see more movement on the public school-funding front, due to a Democratic commissioner board and state House of Representatives, Barnes said the goal is to get the county commissioners a recommended budget by April; thus, any changes to the state’s funding model may not see advances until the following year.
Jones thought the Democratic gains may allow commissioners to be braver if the district requests additional money.
“While we’re waiting for solutions at the state level, we ask our local funding partners here to step out on faith,” Jones said.
He said his budgeting approach is to focus on what each school needs rather than the number of students each school has.
Another of his priorities is to examine the discrepancies in academic performance between white students and students of color, pointing to New Hanover County NAACP education chair Kemeka Sidbury’s comments on the district’s latest academic achievement data during the school board’s Nov. 5 meeting.
“The successes of the county should be commended … however, there is still more to do when it comes to Black student achievement,” Sidbury said, pointing out this sector has lower scores and success rates than their white pers.
Jones said: “We’ve got to start digging there. We’ve got to uncover that story because there’s something there.”
Dale also wants to focus on the district’s low-performing schools, or schools that earned a D or F academic score and didn’t exceed growth expectations according to state metrics. The district’s continuously low-performing schools overlap with schools that have the most economically disadvantaged children and students of color.
“I’m really interested in bringing those up to being high-performing schools,” Dale said.
Both Jones and LaRue stressed the importance of listening to and continuing to serve in the community. LaRue wants to increase communication between the district and public.
“I’ve learned that you know transparency isn’t just about okay, did you see us do the meeting?” she said. “A lot of people don’t watch those meetings, so you know just working with our communications department.”
Ultimately, Jones, the top vote-getter among his cohort, said he would characterize a successful first year in office by the board’s ability to form a good rapport and a strategic plan to work toward.
“[If we] have in some way cleared away the rubble of the culture war and gotten back down to academic basics when it comes to what the policies we have on deck look like, I think that would be a great hallmark of success,” Jones said.
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