Rockingham elections officials ordered to re-hear challenge over GOP House candidate

A Republican politician won a battle Monday — at least temporarily — against GOP leaders who are trying to keep him off the 2024 ballot for a seat in North Carolina House of Representatives.

Joseph Gibson, an outspoken conservative activist in Rockingham County, is seeking to unseat his local representative: Republican state Rep. Reece Pyrtle, a retired police chief who has been in office since 2021. Whoever wins the GOP primary between them would all but be guaranteed to win the general election as well; no Democrats or members of any other party are running to represent that deep-red rural area north of Greensboro.

State and local GOP officials are seeking to end Gibson's candidacy before it begins, however, by having him removed from the ballot altogether. They say it's not about protecting Pyrtle but rather for another reason: Gibson has a lengthy criminal record in North Carolina and Connecticut and, they claim, he hasn't proven that he's regained the right to vote following his felony convictions.

Rockingham County Republican Party chair Diane Parnell filed a complaint with the county elections board seeking to have Gibson dismissed on those grounds. Last week, the county board voted to do just that and keep his name off the ballot. But Gibson appealed that decision to the State Board of Elections. He won relief there on Monday; the state board voted unanimously to send the case back to the county level for a do-over.

Gibson said he has regained the right to vote — providing a document that appears to be from the Rockingham County courthouse stating he's been an eligible voter since July 2022. He also claimed that the county elections board didn't give him notice of the meeting during which they voted to kick him off the ballot.

Ophelia Wright, chair of the Rockingham County Board of Elections, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment after Monday's vote.

The votes at both the county level and state level have so far been unanimous and bipartisan, despite reaching different conclusions. In North Carolina all election boards have five members, including three from the party that controls the governor's office, currently the Democratic Party.

Gibson said Monday that he feels targeted by his fellow Republicans, specifically because of his opposition to a proposal to bring a casino to the county. Casinos are a controversial issue in conservative circles, but one that's a top priority of the most powerful Republican in the state legislature, Senate leader Phil Berger, who is also from Rockingham County.

In his written evidence and testimony Monday, Gibson said GOP leaders have, for years, never cared about his criminal record — until he started raising concerns about casinos. The North Carolina Republican Party made him an official presidential elector in 2020, he said, allowing him to help formally allocate the state's votes in the Electoral College on behalf of Republican Donald Trump.

And he showed an email exchange with Parnell in 2021 in which she inquired about his criminal history after he expressed an interest in being appointed to a vacant legislative seat that year. Yet it didn't appear to be a concern when he ran for office in 2022, with no challenges to his candidacy like the one he's facing now.

"The only thing that has changed in the last two years, since I was last on the ballot, is that ... I oppose certain issues concerning Rockingham County political issues, for one, the casino project," Gibson said.

"I believe this issue is really the sole issue," he added.

Dylan Watts, the Senate GOP caucus director who helps lead political campaigns for Berger and others, declined to comment on Gibson's accusations Monday.

Parnell didn't speak at the hearing Monday. Her attorney, Craig Schauer, said she didn't know for sure about Gibson's criminal history in 2022 when she and Gibson emailed about it. The emails Gibson provided show that she asked about rumors that he had a record. Schauer added that the more extensive research this time came from Republican staffer Stephen Wiley, the House GOP caucus director, who Schauer said this year ran background checks on many candidates.