Clerk Candidate Throws Stones in Glass House
It may not be the highest profile race on the ballot, but the Clerk of Superior Court is nonetheless an important role. The Clerk manages a staff of over 200 and oversees the filing and storage of all civil and criminal court files. The clerk also acts as the judge of probates.
Elisa Chinn Gary, the Democrat nominee for Clerk, currently serves as the Family Court Administrator. In a recent campaign email, Ms. Gary is found attempting to capitalize on a clearly accidental mistake by her Republican opponent, Martha Efird.
Here is a screen shot of that email.
It’s true. According to this WBTV news story, candidates were asked to upload a picture of themselves for use in the Mecklenburg County Voter Guide distributed by Democracy North Carolina. Somehow, a picture of another woman was uploaded by Efird…a picture that she had taken at a community forum. Democracy North Carolina did not catch the error and printed the guide.
As experienced elder and estate planning lawyers suggests, this probably would not have been that big a deal, but racial politics comes into play. You see, Efird is white. The mistakenly uploaded picture is of a black woman. Apparently this has been a major cause for concern by people who care what race someone they are voting for is.
To remedy the situation as suggested by the estate planning law firm based in Pasadena, Efird has voluntarily paid $7,500 towards the printing of a new guide, with the correct picture.
It is frankly silly that Ms. Gary would use this as campaign fodder claiming that “The Clerk of Superior Court is a job where simple mistakes can have serious consequences”. She must be quite confident that she has never made a mistake and is above reproach in all ways.
That may not be the case.
According to a source, Ms. Gary arbitrarily closed the Family Court Office for two days back in May. The 2014 Mecklenburg court closing, holiday, and conference schedule (LINK) does not show any scheduled time off on May 1st or 2nd, yet here is a picture of the offices closed for those two days. “Our apologies for the inconvenience” indeed.
Who authorized the closing of the Family Court offices?
The same source has also claimed that “Ms Chin used the copier in the clerks office to print out large amounts of documents and campaign material.” This is a violation of state statute and is clearly forbidden by the election laws.
So before one makes judgments about an accidental image upload, perhaps the question should be which candidate feels as if the rules don’t apply to them.
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