From Staff Reports 

CANDLER — It was, in his own words, “a Herculean task,” but an elated Bruce O’Connell of Candler recently announced that he finally succeeded in his quest to gather the number of signatures required to run as an unaffiliated candidate for the second district seat on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners.

As a result, O’Connell, 69, owner of the BlueRidge Parkway’s Pisgah Inn and a former Republican congressional candidate, will square off with incumbent Democrat Terri Wells in the Nov. 5 general election.

 Buncombe’s second district covers the northern and western portions of the Buncombe. Wells did not face a primary challenger.

“Unaffiliated candidates must gather signatures from 4 percent of district voters to qualify, according to state law,” the Asheville Citizen Times reported in a March 18 story, adding that “Buncombe County Director of Elections Corinne Duncan told the Citizen Times March 14 that O’Connell gathered 2,752 valid signatures. He needed 2,628 voters to sign his petition by March 5 to move forward.”

According to the ACT, “O’Connell told the Citizen Times March 15 that he deployed a grassroots strategy to collect the signatures, knocking on doors, deputizing family and friends to help and stationing himself at the Weaverville Community Center to recruit early voters for his petition.

“‘Let’s face it, it was a Herculean task. It was amazing that I pulled it off,’ he said.”

Meanwhile, as reported in the last edition of the Daily Planet, one other unaffiliated candidate — former Sheriff Van Duncan — also has qualified to run for the Buncombe Board of Commissioners, after collecting 9,524 signatures. 

Duncan, a former Democrat, will vye with Democrat Amanda Edwards —  a commissioner who currently represents the third district — for the board chair, which is being vacated by Brownie Newman, who is voluntarily stepping down.

  “Duncan was aided by a mailing campaign, which cost him most of the $40,769.10 he raised,” the ACT story noted.

Meanwhile, O’Connell reportedly complained to the ACT that  the 4 percent registered voter requirement “was too high and declared the time constraint posed by the primary deadline too stringent. “

The newspaper also reported that O’Connell believes that “candidates who run on a North Carolina party ticket do not need to petition onto the ballot. If O’Connell ran as a write-in candidate, he would have needed to collect 100 signatures to compete in the general election.”

“It just doesn’t make good sense,” O’Connell was quoted by the ACT as saying. “Denying people who want to run the ability to be on the ballot and making it super hard to get on the ballot doesn’t seem right to me and it needs to be changed.”