Former North Carolina elections official says political battle led to her ouster

At the North Carolina State Board of Elections meeting Wednesday, all the votes were bipartisan and unanimous as three new board members and two returning members were sworn in, chose a new chairperson and renewed the contract of state elections director Karen Brinson Bell.

But behind the scenes in the days before, one former board member says, a political battle played out between Republicans and the Cooper administration — a dispute that led to her ouster.

Stella Anderson, a board member since 2018, was told by the governor’s office on April 27 that she would be reappointed. A few days later, she was told she would not be returning to the board, due to an eligibility issue raised by one of her fellow board members.

Cooper spokesman Jordan Monaghan confirmed the reversal.

“I had expected and wanted to continue,” Anderson said. “I did not expect my work on the board, which obviously I was very committed to, and felt like service on this board is some of the most important service that a person could do — I wasn't expecting that to come abruptly to an end.”

Anderson, a professor at Appalachian State, is a full-time state employee. As such, according to a law passed in 2018, introduced as House Bill 1029, she would be ineligible to serve on the state elections board. However, she said she was allowed to continue serving under the 2018 law because she was already a board member at the time. She believes that status is still in effect.

“Best I could tell, everybody was under the assumption that … there was no provision against me continuing on for 2023 reappointment,” Anderson told WRAL News. “I do not have full information as to why everything got switched.”

According to Anderson, one of her fellow board members, Stacy “Four” Eggers, a Republican, raised the issue of her eligibility and that of another Democrat on the board, Jeff Carmon, who at the time held a part-time teaching position at the North Carolina Central University School of Law.

Anderson said that Eggers approached state elections board staff suggesting that if if the governor were to reappoint Anderson and Carmon, then the state Republican Party would take legal action questioning the legality of the appointments and, by extension, the validity of any decisions made by the board, including the reappointment of Karen Brinson Bell as director.

Brinson Bell, now serving a third two-year term, has frequently been the target of criticism by Republican lawmakers, who accused her in 2020 of seeking to circumvent Republican-backed limits on absentee voting.

Eggers confirmed he had raised the issue, but said it was not an challenge to the Democrats’ re-appointments. He added that he isn’t aware of any official challenge to Carmon or Anderson’s eligibility.

After what Anderson described as “a difference of opinions between lawyers as to the exact provision” in H1029, her appointment was rescinded.

With Republicans now in control of the state’s appellate courts, Anderson said she believes the Cooper administration wasn’t confident of its odds in a legal battle.

“What I gather is: The governor's office decided, ‘Nope, no risk, no hashing out the interpretation of the law,’” Anderson said. “That was the end of it.”

Carmon was reappointed, but only after resigning from his teaching post at N.C. Central.

Carmon told WRAL he only taught one course a semester as an adjunct professor. He’s a full-time attorney. But he confirmed that he had been “given a call saying, per general statute, that I was considered a state employee, and that would be a problem.”

“That did surprise me,” Carmon said. In 2019, when he was first appointed to the board, “there was no issue about it. It was never brought up, because all I do is [teach as an] adjunct. I don’t have an office there.”

“I did not want to quit, but I know the importance of the elections process,” he added.

Eggers was not available for an interview Thursday, but responded via email.

“In a conversation with [state elections board] General Counsel Paul Cox prior to my appointment,” Eggers told WRAL, “I asked him about the eligibility requirements set forth in the session law, and he stated he would look into it. I did not hear anything further on this topic and learned who was appointed from the Governor’s press release on Monday.”

Cox declined to comment.

A spokesman for the state GOP neither confirmed or denied Anderson’s claims. .

“The NCGOP reserves the right to challenge the eligibility of any individual who is not statutorily eligible to serve on the State Board of Elections," NCGOP spokesman Jeff Moore said in a statement.

Monaghan, Cooper’s spokesman, said the governor is grateful to Anderson for her service to the state.

"Ms. Anderson served the public well and was an excellent board member but due to issues raised about her eligibility for reappointment, another person was chosen to minimize potential challenges from those who seek to undermine fair elections,” Monaghan said.

Anderson said she believed the GOP was trying to remove her and Carmon from the board in order to increase Eggers’ influence. Former chairman Damon Circosta, the third Democrat on the board, had already said he didn’t want another term, and so had Republican Tommy Tucker.

“If Jeff and I were taken out, that would leave all new Democratic appointees,” she explained. “[Eggers] would be the last one standing, and with all the other members new and untested, the board as a whole would be weakened, kneecapped.”

Meredith College political scientist David McLennan said he’s”never heard of that kind of power play” behind the scenes at a state elections board.

“It’s unprecedented, both in North Carolina and any other state that I’m familiar with,” McLennan said.

McLennan predicted that the political machinations could contribute to decreased confidence in state elections.

“That, coupled with Republicans now controlling the state Supreme Court, kind of gives you pause as to what’s going to happen,” McLennan said. “Is this really going to be a board that’s going to function in a nonpartisan manner, investigate in a nonpartisan manner?”