Eighteen pages of documents will show Melissa Gott has maintained Brunswick County–not New Hanover County–as her true home, according to the man challenging her residency before the local board of elections.
Justin LaNasa, who filed a notice of challenge with the New Hanover County Board of Elections on Oct. 11, has asserted Gott—the county Republican Party’s nominee for a vacancy on the county commission—does not truly live at the address she claims on her voter registration and that the elections board ought to delete her from the rolls.
A full hearing is set for Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the elections board’s office to determine whether LaNasa’s evidence is enough. An attorney, John Ferrante, will represent Gott in the process.
Asked about the documents he plans to submit, LaNasa on Monday would not provide specifics other than to say he would “release that tomorrow, but they’re public records in official form that can’t be forged or tampered with.”
He also said they totaled 18 pages and would go “way above and beyond” evidence he submitted during a preliminary hearing on Gott’s residency held with the elections board on Oct. 16. LaNasa had presented to the board a copy of an electricity bill connected to a Brunswick County house Gott and her husband own in the Leland area. After additionally providing the board a document of his own home’s electricity usage for comparison, LaNasa told the board he had concluded the Brunswick County house was certainly occupied and probably Gott’s primary residence.
According to North Carolina’s constitution, a voter must “be a resident of the state and the electoral district one is voting in.” Further, law requires each of-age citizen to have only one domicile for voting purposes.
Gott’s residency fell under question after the New Hanover County GOP on Oct. 3 nominated her to fill a vacancy on the county commission. While Gott’s voter registration claimed 602 Chestnut St. in Wilmington, a neighbor of that address complained to the elections board that Gott, an attorney, only uses that address professionally, for her law office.
Further, Gott’s husband, William Johnson, was at the time registered to vote in Brunswick County at the Leland address LaNasa contends is Gott’s true home. While Gott since 2004 had been voting with the Chestnut Street address, Johnson since 2008 had voted with the Leland address. Officials including Chairman Jonathan Barfield of the county commission questioned how that could be legitimate.
Johnson has since changed his registration to reflect the Chestnut Street address.
But North Carolina law defines one’s domicile as “the place to which the person intends to return,” meaning someone who owns multiple properties throughout the state or country can pick one of them for voting purposes, as long as the voter is registered only in that locality and indeed intends to return to it to live. (Read more about residency challenges here.)
Gott “has for a decade chosen New Hanover as her voting domicile,” attorney Ferrante said, adding LaNasa’s challenge was “frivolous.”
Ferrante said he was confident the elections board would give his client a fair hearing.
LaNasa said he hopes so, too, considering one of the board members, Bill Kopp, has admitted to knowing Gott for eight years and had even employed her legal services for a real estate transaction. LaNasa at the Oct. 16 hearing had asked Kopp to recuse himself per the relationship, but Kopp declined, reasoning he fully intended to participate without bias.
“I just hope that his opinion is going to stay impartial and he’s going to have an unbiased judgment,” LaNasa said Monday, adding the evidence he plans to submit will “tell where his loyalty lies.”
Contact Ben Brown at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
