Currituck officials side with Hanig in Democrat’s residency dispute | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is CJ Staff.

    On Tuesday, the Currituck County Board of Elections voted that Democrat Valerie Jordan is likely not a resident in the district where she is running for state Senate. The county board is now asking the N.C. State Board of Elections to make a final ruling on Jordan's eligibility to remain a candidate for the November contest.

    The county elections officials considered the evidence presented by Republican Rep. Bobby Hanig, who is running against Jordan in N.C. Senate District 3 race. His protest last week was stacked with pages of documentation that indicate Jordan actually lives in Raleigh and is using her parent's address in Warren County to vote and run for office.

    Currituck County elections officials examined the evidence Tuesday morning, and agreed in a bipartisan 3-2 vote that there was "substantial evidence that a violation of election law other irregularity or misconduct did occur..." in the Jordan campaign. The chair of the county board, Susan Johnson, voted with the two Republicans to send the protest to the state level. Johnson served as sheriff of Currituck County for 28 years before retiring in 2018.

    "I thank the Currituck County Board of Elections for their wisdom and attention to the serious matter of Valerie Jordan not living in Senate District 3," Hanig wrote in a press release after the vote. "The Board put partisanship aside and did the right thing for the citizens of Senate District 3."

    In the evidence presented were photos of Jordan's car at her property in Raleigh each day for 23 days, tax documents, voter registrations, and donation forms that the board members found illustrate that Jordan actually lives in Raleigh, while her extended family lives at the Warrenton address.

    According to her campaign website, Jordan grew up in Warrenton, which is in Senate District 3. She told the Raleigh-based News and Observer that she moved to Raleigh in the 1990s but then commuted back to Warrenton to care for her sick mother. She claimed she eventually moved back to Warren County full-time in 2020 and registered to vote there. Tax records show that she also remained the primary owner of the Raleigh property after 2020.

    The Warren County address listed on her voter registration since 2020 is a 2,000-square-foot property valued at $52,000, originally purchased by her parents in 1989. In addition to Jordan, there are five people registered to vote in Warren County using that address, all with the surname "Alston."

    Hanig's team offers tax filings for that Warrenton property that show Jordan and Percy Alston, identified as a parent, are both 100% owners. However, Jordan's Raleigh address is listed as the primary address on the tax forms.

    "Warrenton is my home, where I pray on Sunday, and where I host our family dinners," Jordan told the News and Observer. State law requires that candidates reside in the district for at least one year immediately prior to the general election.

    If the N.C. State Board of Elections agrees with the county elections officials and deems Jordan to be ineligible for the N.C. Senate District 3 race before September 9, the local Democratic Party has the option of choosing another candidate to replace her.

    "There is still time to replace Valerie Jordan with a Democrat who lives in Senate District 3 before ballots are printed," said Hanig. "If Valerie Jordan is allowed to remain on the ballot and she wins, Northeastern North Carolina will be without a state Senator - and she will be Wake County's seventh Senator."

    Senate District 3 includes 10 counties in North Eastern North Carolina including Bertie, Camden, Currituck, Gates, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, Northampton, Tyrrell, and Warren counties.

    On August 16, Jordan participated in a town hall held for candidates organized by the AFL-CIO labor union. The other three candidates who participated were two Democrats running for U.S. Congress representing Wake and Mecklenburg counties, and one running for N.C. Senate representing Wake County.