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Wife Betty Cain, left, was happy for her husband, Sheriff Michael Cain, Tuesday night as she held his granddaughter MacKenzie. Also pictured are grandson Caleb and daughter Heather, right, at the Yadkinville Country Club.
“I’m very pleased with the results, very pleased,” said incumbent Howard McKnight of the Yadkin County Board of Education. “This will be my third term. I’m going to find the best educational system that we can.”
Marion Welborn, who won a seat on the county board of commissioners, said, “Well I’m glad it’s over with, and I’m glad I won.”
When asked when he will start to work, he replied, “I’ve been working. What do you mean started?” Welborn claimed that he did not knock on one single door campaigning. “Not one door,” he said without a smile.
“I’d like to thank everybody who voted for me, my family and poll workers,” he said. “It’s hard to beat with name recognition like Frank Zachary. His mamma was the vice chairman of the Republican Party of North Carolina. He has a good family. You can’t beat him.” It will be December when he is sworn in.
“It’s just politics,” said Mitchell Davis, a candidate for sheriff, who promises to help. “Any way I can. Whatever I can do to help.”
Doug Groce ran for sheriff. On Saturday he was at the Jonesville Jubilee.
“I ran a good clean race,” he said. “I met a lot of fine people. I had a lot of fine support. I appreciate the support from the people. It may be over, and I suppose it is. I met a lot of fine people. I had a good core group of close friends. They stuck with me real hard for several months.”
Kevin Austin, a member of the board of commissioners, was asked if he could explain the election.
“I don’t know if I can because I’m still trying to figure it out for myself,” Austin said. “I’d say the turnout was surprisingly low. With the outrage in society right now, I thought the people would have been disgusted and come out and vote, but I believe they were disgusted and decided to not vote. I haven’t figured it all out yet.”
Brady Wooten lost which might have been an upset or surprise.
“He finished fourth,” Austin explained. There were three seats.
“I tell you what, he’s going to be missed because nobody works harder than Brady Wooten,” Austin said. “It’s going to be quite a big workload for us to pick up.”
The new members will be Frank Zachary, Marion Welborn and Gilbert Hemric.
“I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t know a whole lot of about it,” said Zachary. “Who won second and third?” Hemric was a close third, and Welborn was second.
“I just heard a lot of people say that they didn’t vote for anyone in office,” said Zachary, a local attorney. “Right or wrong, I feel like that’s probably what happened. I heard several people say that they just wouldn’t vote for anyone who was an incumbent.”
Zachary served for eight years on the board, two four-year terms, one from 1980-84 and then from 1984-88.
“I kind of know what I’m getting into, at least a little bit. I don’t know. It’s a scary thing in a sense, but I’m depending on Kevin here,” he said. “I was born here, born and raised here. I am 58 at the present time. I’m about three weeks away from being 59.”
He attends First Methodist Church of Yadkinville. He graduated from Forbush High School.
“I’m from Yadkin County, and I’m proud of it,” he said. “I never thought about doing anything but coming home and working with my Dad and practicing law.” His wife is from Elkin, and she has been his campaign manager. They have three sons, Frank Zachary Jr., 26, a university student, Michael Zachary, 22, and Matthew Zachary, 20, a university student.
Zachary has a small town practice. “The challenges for Yadkin County is to bring business here to help pay taxes,” he said. “And to shore up the property values that I’m afraid are declining. Tax base is all important. I just don’t want to see it shrink any more than it is and find some help to pay the taxes.”
What would he think if a Wal-Mart announced it was coming to the county?
“I think it would be a good thing,” he said. “For a jobs point of view. Wal-Marts usually employ a lot of people. There’s Wal-Marts within 15 minutes of here in any way you want to go. But a lot of our sales tax money is being spent in other counties.”
At Yadkinville Country Club Sheriff Michael Cain, 52, sat on the porch as family members and friends helped him celebrate in the quiet countryside. He has been sheriff since 1998. This is his fourth win.
“I feel good about what we did and everything,” Cain said. “It was a tighter race. It was a tight race. We had a 244 vote total. I haven’t talked to any of the other candidates so I don’t know what their thinking is.”
What did he do to win?
“We are just doing what we always do, just doing our job with poll workers out working. I didn’t do anything special this time. I didn’t spend a lot of money. I didn’t have money to spend,” he said. “Other people, from what I heard, a couple of them had several thousands of money. I didn’t get out there and try to raise that kind of money because with the economy the way it is, people ain’t got that kind of money. So we just fought a race basically on what was done versus what we’re going to do.
“I’d like to thank everybody who voted for me and everybody who stood behind me all these times,” he said. He will have been married 33 years in October, and he thanked his wife for her support.
“I’ve got a great bunch of people,” he said of his staff. “All of them fell in behind me and worked hard. They go as hard as they can at it.”
The sheriff candidates were Gary Wayne Willard who got 24 votes (.51 percent), Don Johnson with 141 (2.99 percent), Doug Groce with 1,642 (34.83 percent), Mitchell W. Davis with 1,022 (21.68 percent) and Cain with 1,886, (40 percent).
In the county commissioner race the three top vote-getters were Welborn who had 2,227, second to Zachary at 2,819 and Gilbert Hemric with 2,200. Pete Knight had 1,829 votes, and Kevin Thomas had 912. Brady Wooten had 1,996.
In the N.C. State Senate District 30 GOP race it was Don W. East with 2,757 to Paul M. Johnson’s 1,255.
In the U.S. House District 5 GOP race it was U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx with 3,611 and Keith Gardner with 1,014.
In the U.S. Senate GOP race it was Larry Linney with 123, Brad Jones at 532, Eddie Burks at 194 and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr with 3,601.
In the Court of Appeals Judge race it was Mark E. Klass with 1,619, Jane Gray with 1,395 and Ann Marie Calabria with 1,164.
In the Court of Appeals Judge race it was Steven Walker with 1,963, Rick Elmore with 1,206, Leto Copeley with 260 and Alton D. (Al) Bain at 575.
In the Yadkin County Board of Education race with three seats, the top vote-getter was Howard McKnight at 3,538, Frank Brown with 3,109 and Diane Hampton at 2,945, then Kim Clark Phillips at 1,667 and Kelliene Fisher at 1,519. There were 96 write-ins.
In the N.C. State Senate District 30 Democratic race it was Ric Marshall with 485 to Robert Nickell’s 109.
In the U.S. Senate race for Democrats it was Marcus W. Williams at 33, Ann Worthy at 27, Elaine Marshall at 229, Ken Lewis at 35, Susan Harris at 42 and Cal Cunningham at 262.
There are 23,191 registered voters. Around 23.49 percent of the voters turned out Election Day.
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