Candidate tries the hard way

A Wilkes County man who hopes to claim Virginia Foxx's 5th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is doing it the hard way, without money, name recognition or a party behind him.

Brad Smith, a 49-year-old construction supervisor who lives in Mulberry, is trying to gather more than 17,000 signatures to get on the 2010 ballot as an unaffiliated candidate.

Smith was a longtime Republican until about five months ago when he says he felt disenfranchised by the party system.

"I kind of felt there is no voice in Washington for regular folks anymore," he said. "There's so much partisan bickering. I don't want to be beholden to a party."

Smith faces a daunting task. Election law says he must have signatures from at least 4 percent of people registered to vote in the district as of Jan. 1, 2010.

He estimates that the 17,000 signatures will take him comfortably past the necessary threshold, so that he'll still have enough signatures in the probable event that some of the names are rejected because the person has moved or the signature can't be verified for other reasons. He's getting signatures in a district that spreads across all or part of 12 counties, including part of Winston-Salem and all of Northwest North Carolina.

"My initial assessment is he has an extremely steep mountain to climb here," said Dr. Joel Thompson, a professor of political science at Appalachian State University.

For one thing, elections laws in North Carolina make it much more difficult than most states for an unaffiliated candidate to get on a ballot.

Ross Perot did it in the 1992 presidential race, but he had lots of money and lots of help, said state elections officials. Carolyn Russell did it in 1990 in Wayne County, winning election to the N.C. House as an unaffiliated candidate before switching to the Republican Party. But she didn't have nearly as large an area to cover.

In Foxx, Smith is squaring off with a polarizing figure people often either strongly like or strongly dislike, but someone who has a number of advantages in the contest.

"Virginia Foxx has a great deal of name recognition," Thompson said. "She has an organization in place. She has a reputation for providing a great deal of constituent services and as an incumbent she has money."

Foxx didn't respond to an interview request for this story.

Smith says his quest isn't personal against Foxx, and he likes her. But he says he's a political junkie who is upset with the rhetoric in Washington and has issues he wants to work on.

"Number one is the deficit," he said. "If we can't stop the flood of money leaving Washington, we're going to leave our children and grandchildren a debt that can never be repaid."

He said he'd repeal trade agreements that have shipped jobs overseas and closed factories. He wants a smaller, leaner government.

"A lot of people's sentiment is ‘I wish the government would leave us alone,'" Smith said. "Here we are trying to figure out how to make our mortgage payment on time, keep tires on our cars, and Washington just doesn't get it."

Johnnie McLean, the deputy director of the State Board of Elections, said that Smith did well by starting his signature gathering process early.

The signatures must be collected by noon on June 25, and elections officials in the appropriate county have to verify the signatures as belonging to eligible voters.

She said that some people take what she calls a lazy approach, running ads and asking people to clip them and send in signatures. She said that those who have been successful in getting on the ballot real­ly work at it.

"They get out and get up in areas where there will be a lot of people and they approach everybody," she said.

Smith has been doing that since this past fall.

He works at his construction job for 10 hours a day Mondays through Thursdays, then heads out on Fridays and Saturdays to gather signatures. He figures he can't get enough going door-to-door so he tries to stick to large gatherings.

He gathered about 1,200 signatures during the Brushy Mountain Apple Festival in North Wilkesboro. He's been to Mount Airy's Autumn Leaves Festival, to more than a dozen high-school football games and to an Appalachian State University game. He greeted Wilkesboro shoppers in the pre-dawn hours as they sought bargains on the day after Thanksgiving.

Winter is slowing things down, because it's harder to find those large gatherings of people.

But he's established a Web site, www.mrsmithgoestowashington.info, and is plugging away, visiting Christmas parades and other gatherings.

Smith moved to ­Wilkes County from Florida in 1995 to take on a construction project. He and his wife, Tracey, have been married 29 years and have two grown children.

The 5th District includes Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Davie, Stokes, Surry, Watauga, Wilkes and Yadkin counties and parts of Forsyth, Iredell and Rockingham counties.

mmitchell@wsjournal.com


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