Sunday, Nov. 01, 2009

Election drama splits Carolina Shores

CAROLINA SHORES, N.C. -- Regardless of who wins Tuesday's municipal election in Carolina Shores, there will those who feel the town has been saved from an unpleasant future.

The campaign has unfolded like a Greek drama, with complex characters who revolve around and support or tear down two central characters, one a hero and one a villain, depending on the side voters have chosen. .

Only one of the central characters, though, is running for office. The other exists mostly offstage in the campaign, yet has become central because he represents the change two other candidates hope to bring to town government if elected.

"You could say people see this as a race between [Commissioner] Gere Dale and [Mayor] Steve Selby," said Jack Elliott, a former mayor.

Elliott said he is backing Dale. He calls Selby power hungry.

Maslin Kain, treasurer of the Concerned Citizens of Carolina Shores, is a Selby stalwart who said she considers Dale arrogant and mean, and blames him for a toxic environment in the town.

Even Elliott called Dale arrogant.

"My very nature is to be intolerant of expressed ignorance and statements by people who choose to ignore facts given them," he said. "If that translates into arrogance, so be it."

Supporters of Dale's opponents, Walter Goodenough and Joyce Dunn, say Dale's attitude is reflected in recent town government actions, including a letter earlier this year from Assistant Town Manager Amanda Chestunut they say rudely ordered residents to clean out culverts under their driveways or face liens on their homes for the cost of the town doing it.

Kain said Dale has made the race for two commissioners' seats a referendum on him or Selby.

Kain and Tom Pressel, president of the Concerned Citizens, said the group will continue to monitor town government regardless of who is elected and criticize it when necessary.

Elliott and others, including Dale, say they fear a future where the town would, they believe, be controlled by a board with a majority of commissioners sympathetic to Selby. They are convinced such a board's first action would be to fire Chestnut and Town Manager Linda Herncane, despite statements to the contrary from Dunn and Goodenough.

Selby has been accused of harrassing Chestnut and Herncane in their jobs. The board censured him this year for interferring in day-to-day town business. But that nor a complaint Chestnut filed against the mayor with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have impressed Selby supporters, who say Dale too was formally censured by commissioners in 2004 - like Selby.

Dale and Selby each say the censures against them meant nothing.

Selby said racial and gender-bias allegations have been made about him, but he denies those charges and dismisses them as the effort of Dale's desperation over the impending vote.

Lottie Gibson once served with Selby on the Greenville County Council, and she is the longest continually serving member of that panel.

Gibson, who is black, said she drew the ire of Selby, who is white, and his wife, Judy, when she once inserted herself into a speakers' lineup, without invitation to speak or attend, during a ceremony held in her district to welcome troops home.

Gibson said that at the subsequent Greenville County Council meeting, after Selby's wife urged during public comments that Gibson be sanctioned, Selby made a motion for the sanction, adding that she could no longer speak publicly as a county representative without specific board authorization. That motion failed, Gibson said.

Selby said he didn't recall the specific motion Gibson attributed to him, but added that it was probably accurate.

"I don't believe it had anything to do with her race, but her impudence," he said. Selby said he and his wife visited Gibson more than once when she was a patient in the hospital.

Elliott and Catherine Powell said Dale is the only person who will save the town from the uncertainties of a Selby-dominated board.

Pressel also said Dale had done good things for the town. But those days are over, he said.

Powell, a former 2007 mayoral candidate and former town commissioner with more experience in Carolina Shores government than Selby, related two exchanges she had with him that she considered sexist. She said after the election, Selby told her she was lucky not to have won the election because she couldn't have handled the mess he found at Town Hall.

She also said that during a conversation with a staff member about why the town's first administrator said he could not work in a confined space with a woman before resigning from his job after four days, Selby interjected, "I wouldn't even ride in a car with you at night alone."

He explained, she said, that such an arrangement could devolve into false gender-related charges against him and cost the town money to defend him.

Selby said he didn't recall, but likely made the statements Powell reported. He said he didn't feel she could handle the mayor's job because of her temperament, communication skills and relationship skills, not her gender.

He also said he won't ride alone in a vehicle with any woman but his wife nor with a child, because of his religious beliefs. He cited a Bible verse, 1st Thessalonians 5:22, that exhorts believers to "abstain from all appearance of evil."

Paula Gucker, assistant county administrator for public works in Greenville County, and Teresa Kizer, clerk to the Greenville County Council, said their dealings with Selby always were professional, and neither ever saw any racial or sexist behavior from him.

Dale, who said he has been involved in town affairs longer than anyone else and is an expert on many things the town board must deal with, is upset with a resident who daily distributes e-mails about him to town residents.

He also is incensed by a flier distributed Thursday around town that recommends that voters choose Dunn and Goodenough.

"If our town has come to this, we are really in deep serious crap," Dale said.