In-person early voting began today in North Carolina, and Election Day 2026 is less than three weeks away. Do you and your friends have a plan to vote? Almost all of the important information you need to make a plan can be found here.
Last week, I explained why I’m only voting for Democratic candidates in 2026. For me, running as a Republican without vocally opposing the current administration and the MAGA agenda is disqualifying from public service in our Democratic Republic. I used the local election for Forsyth County District Attorney as an example.
As a reminder, Amara Hunter, a former police officer and Assistant District Attorney who currently serves as a public defender, is the Democratic Nominee for District Attorney. Jim O’Neill is the Republican incumbent who has been serving as District Attorney since 2009. As of last week, I understood them to both be “non-controversial, qualified, and respected candidates at the local level.”
As often happens in October, more has been revealed (spoiler: it only reinforces my support for Ms. Hunter). Yesterday, the local paper published written responses from both candidates to a handful of questions. To my surprise, one of those responses really caught my attention. While many of you will not be voting in this race, the lessons here are instructive for evaluating any candidate for any public office.
I don’t take candidate surveys too seriously, especially as a former candidate myself. I mostly judge how well a candidate tries to stay on message. These written responses are often carefully crafted over several days with input from many people, so they should be well-polished responses that pivot to a campaign’s central messages. Only when they fail to do that do I usually take notice.
And that is why one of Jim O’Neill’s answers really caught me by surprise. Mr. O’Neill wrote, “my opponent, Amara Hunter, during the short time she spent in our office, proved to be such an incredibly inept trial lawyer that she had to be removed and substituted during a first-degree murder case in the middle of trial because she could not qualify an expert witness for the court.”
First and foremost, I seriously doubt that account is the full story of what happened at trial. Ms. Hunter’s account of that trial, published in a follow up story in today’s paper, tells a very different story. Regardless, even accepting Mr. O’Neill’s account as true, it reflects more poorly on him than Ms. Hunter.
On its face, this sounds like a sharp criticism of Ms. Hunter. However, Mr. O’Neill is actually alleging that he allowed an attorney under his management and supervision to walk into a courtroom unprepared for the job. That is far more disqualifying for his re-election to a job requiring sound management and leadership than any alleged poor performance at a single trial.
This answer really stood out to me because Mr. O’Neill volunteered this self-criticism. Accepting his account as true for the sake of argument, it calls into question Mr. O’Neill’s judgment and management far more than it does Ms. Hunter’s competence as an attorney.
Last week I compared the District Attorney to a managing partner at a law firm. Well, I happen to work at a law firm. If a client hires me for a litigation matter, and I staff the case with attorneys unable to do the work for whatever reason, I am the one the client fires. Applying that same logic here, Mr. O’Neill is in the hot seat.
Here’s a different experience outside the practice of law for context. I spent over a decade on active duty before going to law school. When I was a young lieutenant brand new to my first unit, my immediate supervisor didn’t want to give a briefing to his boss’s boss. He asked me to handle it. Eager to please and get face time with the Colonel, I readily agreed, totally naive to how unprepared I was.
The briefing had about 40 PowerPoint slides. By the third slide, things were going poorly. On the fourth slide, this very senior Colonel stopped the briefing and dismissed me. The way he did it stuck with me. He was pissed. He had choice words for such a colossal waste of his time. But he never raised his voice at me, and he made it crystal clear he was not mad at me.
Instead, he was livid with all of the officers in the chain of command between me, the brand new lieutenant, and him, the colonel 30 years my senior, who had let me walk into that briefing room so woefully unprepared. That is what I expect in a real leader, and it’s what I want in our elected officials responsible for managing others.
Mr. O’Neill’s answer caught me by surprise. While I doubt Mr. O’Neill’s recollection is entirely accurate, his own narrative reflects a failure of leadership from a seasoned District Attorney seeking yet another term. District Attorneys do not need to be the best trial attorneys in the office, but they do need to be competent leaders and managers. Mr. O’Neill’s attempted attack on Ms. Hunter instead only shows he may not be up to the job.
For the majority of you who will not be casting a vote in the race between Amara Hunter and Jim O’Neill, there are still lessons here as we head into the final stretch. First, take candidate surveys with a grain of salt and look for campaign themes; ignore the noise.
Second, consider every criticism of an opponent for what it actually says about both candidates. Some criticisms are exceptionally valid and we need to hear them. Others reveal far more about the person speaking than the person being criticized.
Finally, consider the qualities you actually want in a particular elected official. No candidate is perfect, and they are all open to some kind of criticism. The real question is -- so what? Even accepting a criticism as 100% true, which it rarely is, is there any relevance to the issues facing you or that candidate’s ability to do the job? If not, it’s just a distraction.
Sometimes you just need to go out and hear from candidates yourself. If you are local and want to come meet Amara Hunter, or just want to support her race, she’ll be having a fundraiser on October 19th with Governor Josh Stein. You can register here. I hope to see you there!
P.S. - Don’t forget our great candidates running for state-wide judicial office, including Justice Earls for the N.C. Supreme Court and Judges Arrowood, Hampson, and Walczyk for the N.C. Court of Appeals. You can support these incredible Democratic candidates through our 2026 NC Judicial Slate.
