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Sossamon, Johnson set their sights on 90th District seat
BY
SCOTT JENKINS
SALISBURY POST
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Democrat Leonard Sossamon Jr. and Republican Linda Johnson square off Nov. 7 in a race that has gotten more publicity for who is not in it than who is.
Richard Moore, a popular and rising young Democrat from Kannapolis, announced early this year that he would not seek a third term in the 90th N.C. House District. The announcement came amid allegations that the former A.L. Brown High School teacher committed sex-related crimes with former students.
Moore left the Legislature in May after pleading guilty to three charges. The Cabarrus County Democratic Party nominated Sossamon to finish
Moore's term, a natural move since Sossamon had won the Democratic primary only weeks earlier.
Johnson, a former member of the Kannapolis Board of Education, which accepted
Moore's resignation from A.L. Brown, defeated Jim Gulley Jr. in the GOP primary. Gulley came up short against Moore in 1998 in one of the most expensive House races in the state.
Now Sossamon — with a short session, some co-sponsored bills and several House votes under his belt — and Johnson have set their sights on the future, and the issues facing the state and the 90th District, which includes Kannapolis and Concord.
The issues include nagging problems like road construction and maintenance, in which the state seems lagging locally.
Other issues are populist rallying cries, like improving education.
Still others are touchy subjects, like a state lottery, which some legislators — and both candidates — prefer to put to a vote of the people.
While they agree on a lottery referendum, the two disagree on other issues. Sossamon said
he'd consider a moratorium on state executions to allow death-row inmates access to new technologies, like DNA testing. Johnson opposes such a moratorium, saying it would deny victims of crime the justice they and their families deserve.
Leonard Sossamon Jr.
Sossamon, 50, of 830 Courtney St. S.E. in Concord, calls himself a "bona fide
newcomer." Though he spent several months this spring in Moore's old chair in Raleigh, Sossamon has never won public office or run a full race for one.
He worked 13 years as Concord city manager and five years before that as the city planning director. He resigned in 1998 to become a founding partner in Hunter & Brown, a Concord real estate development company.
A self-described fiscal conservative, Sossamon said he ran the city like a business, and the way he conducted business led some local residents to express surprise when he registered as a Democrat last spring.
After he resigned, council members praised Sossamon for his work in aggressively pursuing new economic prospects, including Concord Mills, and pushing Concord Regional Airport.
Sossamon entered the Concord City Council race last year but withdrew, citing potential business conflicts.
He said running in the 90th District is an extension of the work he did in the public sector for more than two decades. And Sossamon cited that experience as evidence that
he's more qualified for the job than Johnson.
"I think I've got more experience dealing with large budgets and larger personnel
issues," he said. "Ithink (voters) should consider that as an issue. They should look at my track record as opposed to hers, and they would vote for
me."
He also pointed out that he and Johnson part ways on a proposal that she supported while on the school board, giving local boards of education taxing authority. County commissioners provide school systems with funds now.
Johnson said that if school boards are going to be held accountable for education, they ought to have the authority to go along with that responsibility. Sossamon disagrees.
"I'm not for giving another unit of government taxation authority," he said. "I think
that's a slippery slope, and once we embark on it, who knows where it stops?"
Sossamon said he believes the state can improve education by reducing class sizes, continuing to increase
teachers' salaries and accountability and considering ways to help counties build schools, such as a redistribution of sales taxes.
Supporting education means improving not only the public school system but the
state's community colleges as well, he said. He supports the $3.1 billion bond package that voters will decide on this fall.
Another matter Sossamon said is best left to a referendum is a lottery, which proponents say could generate a great deal of money for public education.
During his brief stint in Raleigh, Sossamon served on the House Transportation Committee. Improving local roads is one of his priorities.
Like most elected representatives and candidates from this area, where study after study finds the roads are worse than those in the east, Sossamon said the
state's current funding formula isn't fair. He hopes to help change it.
If voters send him to Raleigh, Sossamon said he'd try again to push through an expansion of the Homestead Exemption Act, a tax bill to benefit seniors that failed to pass in the short session, and look for ways the state can help seniors defray health-care costs.
Linda Johnson
Johnson, 55, of 1205 Berkshire Drive, Kannapolis, is a self-employed computer analyst and tax accountant who served eight years on the Kannapolis Board of Education.
She's proud of her involvement in building A.L. Brown High School's Cyber Campus with money donated by businesses — and no taxpayer involvement — and creating a foundation to keep the Cyber Campus going.
Johnson also highlights her involvement in rewriting system policy, which occurred during her first year on the board, and her work to teach abstinence in sex-education classes. The system made gains in academics and safety all eight years of her tenure, she said.
Though she's held no other elected offices, Johnson served six years as an appointed member of the Cabarrus County Parks and Recreation Commission, where she helped create a foundation to provide money for parks services during years when the county budget
can't pay for them all.
She also helped develop a plan for school recreation facilities to be used as public parks.
"That's a double use of the tax dollar," she said. "I've been really proud of
that."
Johnson also has served on the boards of Head Start and Communities in Schools and was a founder of the Kannapolis Dixie Youth Baseball League.
"I've been an activist for the community for 30 years, and I've always tried to solve the
community's problems with common sense and concern for individuals," she said. "And
I'd like to do that in Raleigh."
She has worked in Raleigh as an unpaid lobbyist for the N.C. School Boards Association and on behalf of local education needs, she said.
She describes herself as conservative and said her background in accounting would help her analyze the
state's budget and ensure that it's "really balanced, not just transferred from account to account, leaving a hole for next
year."
Johnson said she has served as an elected official and not, like her opponent, as a government employee. That gives her an advantage, she said, because she knows what it is to seek and do the will of the people.
"I believe representation is truly getting the wants and the desires and the needs of the community met at the local level, making sure the voices of the businesses, the community, the individuals are heard in
Raleigh,"she said.
Johnson agrees with Sossamon that those voices should be heard on the question of a state lottery, though she calls it a
"quick fix" and fears it would allow the Legislature to divert current education funding elsewhere in the budget.
To improve education, Johnson supports the continued use and refining of the ABCs of Education accountability program, more focus on campus safety and an increase in the numbers of teacher assistants and school nurses.
Johnson said she'd like to see the state spend more money on education. She said it could, without raising taxes, find the money to live up to its 1931 pact with counties to pay expenses for county-built schools. Right now, about 25 percent of the Kannapolis
system's budget pays utility bills, she said.
"Ibelieve in the taxpayers' money going to schools to help solve a lot of
problems," she said. "I think it's an important time to have an education representative in
Raleigh."
On transportation, Johnson agrees with Sossamon that the main culprit in Cabarrus
County's road woes is the uneven way Raleigh distributes money. The problem won't be solved, she said, until Cabarrus gains more political clout in Raleigh and forces the state to face the issue.
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