North Carolina Adds More Partisan GOP Staffers to Election Board

The North Carolina election board on Thursday announced a raft of new hires with backgrounds in the state’s Republican politics, including a former aide to the GOP lawmaker who led the state’s recent gerrymander. 

Meanwhile, top staffers who have left the board are expressing intense concern about its growing politicization since the GOP’s takeover earlier this year. 

In May, the Republicans who control the board replaced its executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, a longtime, apolitical executive director, with Sam Hayes, a GOP operative.

“It is unfortunate that there was a change in direction,” Brinson Bell told Democracy Docket. “The state board of elections has been an independent agency since its inception. And now we’re watching it become very political.”

In another personnel change, the board’s general counsel, Paul Cox, departed at the end of October, the North Carolina journalist Bryan Anderson reported. 

Hayes “comes from a clearly political background,” Cox told Anderson. “That was an indication of how the agency was going to be both perceived and potentially be managed going forward.”

“I’ve always thought that the state’s administration and elections should be as neutral and nonpartisan as possible to maintain the confidence of its voters,” Cox added. “I hope that continues to be the case.”

The three new staffers announced by Hayes Thursday all have been involved in Republican politics or have worked as aides to elected GOPers. 

Tim Hoegemeyer, the board’s new general counsel, ran as a Republican for state auditor in 2020, losing in the GOP primary. Hoegemeyer is a former general counsel in the auditor’s office. Jason Tyson, appointed as director of external affairs, worked as a communications aide to Pat McCrory, when he served as the state’s last GOP governor. And Leah Byers, the board’s new legislative liaison, previously worked for state Sen. Ralph Hise (R), who drew the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map.

It was Hise who succinctly explained the reason for the mid-decade redraw. 

“The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular. Draw a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation,” he said during a hearing. “Republicans hold a razor-thin margin in the United States House of Representatives and if Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo President Trump’s agenda.”

The appointment of Hise’s former aide to the board, with responsibility for working with lawmakers, is the latest evidence that the panel will work closely with partisan Republicans in the legislature.

Brinson Bell said Tyson’s and Byers’ positions, focused on external communications and coordinating with the legislature, are newly created, and give Hayes more control over the staff. 

“These are additional positions that the legislature has funded [and] made them exempt so they can be hired and fired at will by the executive director,” Brinson Bell said. “That’s never been the case. The only exempt position in the agency, for its entire inception, has been the executive director.”

The GOP’s takeover of the board began when state lawmakers passed a measure last year stripping the Democratic governor of his authority over state election administration and handing it to State Auditor Dave Boliek, an elected Republican. The GOP-majority state Supreme Court upheld the law in May, handing Boliek control of the board.

Boliek installed a new GOP majority on the board that immediately fired Brinson Bell and replaced her with Hayes, a former GOP legislative counsel.

Hayes has since unveiled legislation that would restrict access to voting, and has worked with the Trump administration to settle a lawsuit by requiring some voters to provide additional information or be removed from the rolls.

And Dallas Woodhouse – who, as former executive director of the state GOP, tried to limit early voting – joined the board in September as liaison to local boards of elections.

The announcement by Hayes of the new staffers Thursday came just days after Patrick Gannon, the board’s longtime respected communications director, went on leave. 

The move followed a reported internal disagreement over a hyper-partisan statement the board released Nov. 1 about Democrats’ concerns as municipal election voting was underway. The statement alleged the North Carolina Democratic Party chair was “either ignorant or intentionally spreading misinformation.”

Brinson Bell said there are still election administrators in North Carolina who voters can trust. 

“The civil servants working at the state board of elections and the county boards of elections are there in a non-partisan capacity, committed to the process of voting and ensuring that every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot,” she said. 

The story has been corrected to reflect that Gannon is on leave voluntarily.