About 37% of voters in North Carolina are now registered as unaffiliated, but until this year, not one of them has run for Congress in at least decades — and it’s rare to see an unaffiliated candidate for any partisan office in the state.
Shelane Etchison, an Army Special Operations veteran who lives in Moore County, recently qualified to get on the ballot in the 9th congressional district. The district runs from Fayetteville to Greensboro.
She faces a powerful incumbent in Republican Congressman Richard Hudson as well as a Democratic opponent, Nigel Bristow. Getting her name on the ballot was a big challenge: North Carolina law requires unaffiliated congressional candidates to get about 7,500 registered voters from their district to sign a petition.
Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, simply pay a filing fee and compete in a primary to get their party’s nomination.
Etchison’s campaign has raised more than her Democratic opponent but far less than Hudson. By the end of March, she’d brought in $166,000, much of it from funds she loaned her campaign. Much of it went to pay a firm to help gather signatures.
WUNC’s Colin Campbell spoke with Etchison for the latest episode of the WUNC Politics Podcast.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
With an incumbent Republican and a Democrat also running, where do you fit into this congressional race?
"This is certainly a different way about going into politics, and I am a first-time candidate. But I feel like our country is thirsty and hungry for different candidate options, and the numbers show it. I've been unaffiliated for quite some years now, and 35% of the people in this district are unaffiliated as well. I feel like it is time that we have more unaffiliated or independent candidates on our ballot options, so that's precisely what I decided to do."
Just to get to this point, where you've got your name appearing on the ballot, you had to get a petition signed by nearly 7,500 registered voters from your district. How did you go about pulling that off?
"We really didn't get the petition under way in earnest until about mid- to late January, and it was really through a combination of friends, volunteers and then some paid staff that got all the signatures in about a seven-week period. We had people collecting signatures all across the district, from Alamance County down into Hoke County.
It was difficult because of the sheer volume of signatures that we had to get, but what I like to say is that collecting the signatures themselves were not challenging, because people are truly exhausted and tired with politics. When they have an option to have a new independent candidate on their ballot, they were very eager to sign."
What are some of the key issues your campaign is focusing on?
"People are not feeling inspired by their politicians, nor do they trust them, and so we really need to rewrite the script with our government and the gridlock that's going on in Congress. What’s really important to me is how are we fixing these underlying issues? How are we getting better people that are going to be representing us and putting our country first?
Gerrymandering is cheating people out of the power of their vote here, and it's already preordained who's going to be winning races. That's not how a representative democracy is supposed to work. So I'd really push and advocate for legislation to get independent redistricting commissions done at the federal level for federal races."
What are some of the biggest contrasts you see between yourself and Congressman Hudson, as well as the Democratic members of Congress?
"Fiscal conservatism is important to me. We do not have an infinite amount of resources, our debt continues to skyrocket — at the hands of both parties, by the way. The government has a duty to be responsible with taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.
But then on the flip side, perhaps I'm more socially liberal or even libertarian in lots of ways. I do believe that our country and our politicians are supposed to make sure that no matter who you are in this country, no matter where you come from, or your background, you deserve to live a life free of discrimination, and of respect and dignity."
Do you think this campaign will lead to more unaffiliated candidates in the future? And what does North Carolina need to do to make this process more feasible for candidates down the road?
"I hope that it does inspire more people to run as unaffiliated. And in terms of the burden, I think the state does need to make that less burdensome. I do believe there is merit to having some sort of petition and signature requirement. There does need to be some threshold, but I don't think it needs to be as high as what the numbers currently are right now. I think it would be a benefit for people who are even running with the parties to have some sort of petition requirement as well. Right now, there's not much skin in the game: You simply put in a check and write your name on the dotted line, and you're in."
