David Roueche expects voters to continue the house cleaning begun in the last election.

Roueche, 53, of Salisbury, wants to be one of the new Rowan County commissioners to be swept into office.

In 2000, voters ousted two Republican incumbents, replacing them with first-time officeholders.

“There’s a huge wave of change coming,” said Roueche. “People have sensed this. They are struggling to find hope. They want people to move the county forward.”

Roueche is one of eight Republicans seeking the three available nominations.

The candidate, whose family roots date to the 1700s in Rowan, is focusing on what’s happening now. He sees the economy, education and quality of life tightly linked.

“Look at business development, industry. … Have we done a good job?” asked Roueche.

“Look at our county industrial park as the evidence of success,” he said, referring to the hundreds of acres of vacant land and few industries. “It’s a good area to bird hunt.”

Roueche maintains that loss of jobs hurts the entire county. “When you lose jobs, it trickles down to the merchants, businesses and to education.”

And he also maintains commissioners are failing to adequately deal with those losses.

“The commission is one of the few offices that really affect the quality of life of everyday people,” he said. “We must be more aggressive to survive, more aggressive in how we recruit industry and business, and more aggressive in how we market the county. It starts with the county commissioners.”

He also points to High Rock Lake as one of the county’s biggest assets but said commissioners have largely ignored the lake area in marketing or creating public access areas.

Along with recreation jobs, Roueche is a strong supporter of education. He says commissioners are responsible for finding money for schools, not setting policy or procedures.

The county struggles to adequately fund the schools because of the high jobless rate and the failure to attract new industry and business, he said.

Roueche made his first run for the board of commissioners in 1986, losing by 160 votes. A staunch defender of property rights, he ran again in 1994. Both times he ran as a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party within hours of the 1994 defeat.

He served on the Rowan County ABC Board until he ran afoul of county commissioners. Roueche had worked out a deal with the Wallace Graham law firm to trade the current ABC building on Lee Street for a new larger building. Commissioners scuttled the deal once Roueche left the ABC board.

Roueche said the ABC episode didn’t play a role in his decision to run this year. Instead, his concerns about the future of the county prompted his entry into the race.

A resident of Neel Road, Salisbury, he is a regional director for a pharmaceutical company.

Contact Jessie Burchette at jburchette@salisburypost.com  or 704-797-4254.