Six-term incumbent Sen. Betsy Cochrane’s decision to run for lieutenant governor opened those flood gates for a seat that’s generally considered a Republican lock — so much so that no Democrats filed for the pending vacancy.

The winner of the Republican nomination will face Libertarian opponent Michael G. Smith of Davidson County in November.

While the stakes are high in Tuesday’s GOP primary, the large number of candidates — six in all — suggest that a runoff May 30 will be a good possibility. Tuesday’s leading vote-getter will have to capture at least 40 percent of the vote to avoid a call for a runoff.

“It’s going to be a real mathematical difficulty,” says Larry Potts, chairman of the Davidson County Board of Commissioners and one of the candidates for Cochrane’s seat.

The district somewhat favors Davidson County candidates, with about 51 percent of the Republican voters in Davidson County, 22 percent in Rowan, 21 percent in Davie and 7 percent in the Forsyth County area of Clemmons.

But the candidates come from all reaches of the district. Potts lives in Reeds, in the western part of Davidson County; Stan Bingham, near Denton in the southeastern part of Davidson; Andrew Brock, in Farmington in Davie County; Nicholas Slogick, in Mocksville; Jim Neely, in Rowan County; and Nate Pendley, in Clemmons.

In Rowan County, the district includes the precincts of Barnhardt Mill, Bostian Crossroads, North China Grove, Faith, Granite Quarry, Morgan I, Morgan II, Rockwell, Gold Knob, Sumner and a portion of Bostian School.

All of Davie County and much of Davidson County south of Lexington are in the 38th District. Cochrane represented the district from Bermuda Run, near the Davie-Forsyth County line.

“We’re still a small-town community,” Brock says of the conservative, Republican district, “though we’re busting at the seams.”

Plenty of experience

Potts has chaired the Davidson County Board of Commissioners for the past five years. For health reasons, Neely stepped away from a re-election bid to the Rowan County Board of Commissioners in 1998, after serving two years as chairman. He says his better health has returned, allowing him to get back into public service.

Bingham served on the Davidson County Board of Commissioners from 1990-94, including a year as chairman. Brock, the only candidate not to have run for elective office previously, still believes he has more political experience than the rest of the field.

Brock, 26, managed the successful effort by Bill Cobey to win the state GOP chairmanship. He worked in Lauch Faircloth’s re-election campaign in 1998. He was a student sergeant-at-arms in the N.C. Senate for two summers and was a state GOP liaison to the General Assembly.

Slogick ran for the Mocksville Board of Commissioners in 1999, and Pendley has an especially interesting political past. Pendley won the 22nd Superior Court judgeship in 1994, but gave up the position when his residency in the district at the time of his filing was challenged.

A jury later decided that his residency was valid, Pendley says, but he did not try to reclaim the judgeship. He unsuccessfully ran for a N.C. Supreme Court spot in 1996, served three terms as chairman of the N.C. Federation of Young Republicans and is former 5th Congressional District chairman.

Pendley says he has been disturbed for years by the lack of guts of Republicans in the state House and Senate to stand up for basic conservative principles they believe in. The 38th District, where three out of four people voted for Jesse Helms in 1996, is the most conservative district in the state and a Republican winner of the district can afford to be outspoken, Pendley says.

“This is a district where a person who wanted to be a leader and had fire in his belly could take it and become unassailable,” Pendley says. “It could be used so much more effectively to make conservatism safe for everybody else.”

‘One of them’

Bingham, 54, says if a voter doesn’t know him they should call someone in their community who does. He believes they’ll learn about his experiences in business, county government and public schools and colleges, where his four daughters attended and in which his wife teaches.

He started Bingham Lumber in Denton and is publisher of The Oracle in Denton. He says small businessmen have been discouraged with incentives to new business, taxes and regulations.

“I’m one of them,” Bingham adds. “One of the reasons I’m running is to be a spokesman for business.”

Bingham has strong reservations about a state lottery, but is willing to consider a proposal that would provide help for education and college scholarships, he says. He would have to have proof that it wouldn’t create a bureaucracy, Bingham says.

He favors more investigation into mass transit. Bingham strongly supports term limits.

On education, he focuses on stronger discipline, expanded community colleges, programs to reduce dropout rates and better help in connecting students to college scholarships.

A spending problem

Brock believes he could be a state senator to bring different factions of the state Republican leadership together and create solutions “where all sides win and the best thing comes out of it.”

He favors performance audits to cut the cost of state government. He wants to protect gun companies from frivolous lawsuits. He speaks for expanding welfare reform to all 100 counties and helping seniors meet their health care costs.

Brock says police and firefighters in the state need help toward better pay, but he complains that state spending has increased 66 percent since 1995-96 and calls for a cap.

“We don’t have a taxing problem,” says Brock, who was student government president at Western Carolina. “We have a spending problem.”

Brock’s political roots are deep in Davie County. His grandfather, Burr Brock, was an 11-term legislator. His father, Rufus, sat on the N.C. Board of Transportation under Gov. Jim Martin. Andrew Brock says he has a firm grasp of transportation issues and, for him, that interest would continue the legacy of his grandfather and father.

Brock supports vouchers or “opportunity scholarships.” He also promotes more local control of schools so they can adapt to change.

“Allow schools to do what’s best for them,” Brock says.

Seniors, children

Neely, 60, says he’s running for the Senate seat because he’s disappointed in what he wasn’t able to accomplish as a county commissioner. He tried unsuccessfully as a commissioner to push for a measure that would exempt senior citizens from paying any property tax at all.

Too many seniors in Rowan County alone risk losing the only modest asset they have — their homes — by facing increasing property taxes each year, Neely says.

“I can’t help but think we can stop that and still survive financially,” he says.

Neely says the state also must look at offering some help with child care expenses or find ways to establish non-profit child-care centers that would significantly cut the costs for single parents.

As a legislator, Neely thinks he can form partnerships to find his district grants and funding that would help with many things, including schools and roads.

“There are monies — you have to go out and find them,” Neely says. “There are funds due all the districts that are never received. We never get them because we never know that they are there.”

Neely says he’s constantly troubled, knowing that the district has hungry and abused children and seniors. “I’m stupid enough to think that I can be part of finding a solution to this,” he says.

Most recently, Neely has become upset that the state charges counties a tax on emergency vehicles. “That’s an unnecessary tax,” he says. “It needs to be eliminated very badly.”

The ‘lead dog’

Potts, 51, represents one of the more conservative voices in this race. He has led the Davidson County ticket for commissioner the two times he has run. He also likes to be out front on issues.

“Unless you’re the lead dog,” he says, “the scenery never changes.”

If elected, Potts would work to send as much control of spending in all areas, including education, to the local level.

“I know that county government is absolutely the best place to effect change,” he says.

Potts opposes a state lottery and a referendum that would put the issue before voters. He likes the idea of school vouchers as a way to force public school systems to compete for students. He also supports term limits and would like to see the terms of legislators lengthened to four years instead of two.

Potts says his strong interest in education is evident in that spending for education in Davidson County has increased 44.5 percent over the past five years. He also has supported a 1-cent sales tax increase to meet the building needs for schools in Davidson County.

“We cannot continue educating children as we have in the past,” he says. “We’re still basically teaching them (both college-bound students and students not going on) the same core subjects and the way kids have been taught for the past 70 years.”

‘What is right’

Pendley calls on the state to lift its cap on the number of charter schools, provide tuition tax credits for private schools and tax credits for stay-at-home moms and stop racial discrimination on admissions to colleges and universities.

Pendley says race-based scholarships at all schools — traditionally black and white-majority colleges and universities — should be eliminated.

Saying he probably resides in the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, Pendley says he would fight racial and gender quotas in both government and the private sector. He speaks against scholarships that favor homosexuals and against homosexuals being allowed to marry, adopt children and serve in the National Guard.

Pendley promises he would stand up to the N.C. Association of Educators.

“I don’t have the vanity a lot of people have,” he says. “I’m going to do only what I know is right.”

Look in depth

Slogick, 54, says he wants voters to understand that he will think an issue through and accept feedback.He feels if others are inspired to become involved in the political process by his own candidacy then “that’s the part that really matters,” win or lose.

“My direction toward any issue will be factual, based on my work history in engineering,” he says. “Let the facts decide. Let’s look at it in depth, not just a sound bite like, ‘No new taxes.’ That doesn’t say anything.”

Slogick, a longtime engineer at KoSa in Rowan County and a part-time farmer, said he also works on the premise that less government involvement is better.

Slogick speaks strongly for improving the pool of teachers from which schools have to choose and making constant efforts to upgrade that pool. On public schools in general, Slogick compares them to the old vinyl record, which gave way to eight-track, cassette tapes and compact discs.

“They can’t stay back at the vinyl record,” he says.

On school choice and tools such as vouchers, Slogick says parents should have the opportunity to take their children to places where they get the best value.