By Elizabeth Cook
ecook@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — The China Grove Town Board race gained three candidates Thursday, but Faith, Spencer and Rockwell still lack enough candidates to fill all the seats up for election this year.
And the deadline for filing at the Rowan County Board of Elections is noon today.
Here’s the latest rundown:
• China Grove: Donnie Herring, Butch Bivens and Steve Stroud filed for the board of aldermen Thursday. They join Lee Withers, Allen Welter and Ronald Overcash.
That’s six people vying for two seats. Overcash and Withers are on the board now. Bivens served more than a decade on the board before losing by 55 votes two years ago. Stroud and Welter are also former aldermen.
So far, Mayor Don Bringle is unopposed for re-election.
• Cleveland: No new candidates filed Thursday. So far John Steele is running for re-election as mayor and candidates vying for two seats on the town commission are Richard Taylor and incumbents Mary Frank Fleming-Adkins and John Bradford.
• East Spencer: Robert Smith filed for mayor, an office also sought by Barbara Mallett. Current Mayor John Cowan has not filed. In the aldermen’s race for three seats, former mayor and alderman John L. Rustin joined incumbent John Noble and former alderman Titus King as candidates.
• Faith: Mayor Keith Deal and Mayor Pro Tem Todd Peeler were the first to file in this race for all five seats on the town board.
• Granite Quarry: Mary Ponds, Jim LaFevers and Danny Gay filed, joining a field that includes Robert Anderson, Bill Feather and Jake Fisher. That brings the field to six candidates for three seats. Ponds, Feather and Fisher are incumbents — Ponds has been chosen by the board as mayor for many years — and LaFevers is a former alderman.
• Kannapolis: No changes here. The city still has six people vying for three seats: Ryan Dayvault, Amos L. McClorey, Michael Mishkin and incumbents Ken Geathers, Thomas Kincaid and Roger Haas. (Dayvault filed in Rowan County; the others live in Cabarrus County and filed there.)
• Landis: No new candidates filed Thursday. Dennis Brown is seeking re-election as mayor. For alderman, Tony Hilton, Roger Safrit and Tony Corriher are vying for two slots now held by Hilton and Safrit.
• Rockwell: This field also stayed the same — Beau Taylor running unopposed for re-election as mayor, with Chuck Bowman, Timothy Justin Crews, Tim Draper and Charles Wingerson running for re-election as aldermen. There’s one more slot to fill.
• Salisbury: No changes took place Thursday in this race, which includes eight candidates for five seats: all the incumbents — Maggie Blackwell, Brian Miller, Pete Kennedy, Susan Wear Kluttz, Brian Miller and Paul Woodson — and other candidates Blake Jarman, Rip Kersey, and Dale Stephens,The City Council chooses its own mayor, a post Wear has held for several years. Blackwell is mayor pro tem.
• Spencer: With no new candidates filing Thursday, Spencer still has only two candidates — incumbents Jeff Morris and David Smith — for the six seats on its town board, and no one has filed for mayor.
Those wishing to run need to be at the Board of Elections, 130 W. Innes St., by noon today. For more information, call 704-216-8140 or go to http://www.co. rowan.nc.us/GOVERNMENT/Departments/BoardofElections.aspx