State House members this week named three new members to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors (BOG), while Senate members approved a slate of candidates that fell short of the required number of candidates.
Ronald Leatherwood, Purnell Swett, and Marshall B Pitts, Jr., were appointed by House members to serve a four-year term on the BOG during a vote Tuesday. Also during the vote, House members re-elected current board members Charles Hayes, G. Leroy Lail, Priscilla Taylor, Brent Barringer, and Gladys Ashe Robinson.
Unlike in previous years, House members presented a slate of 14 candidates for vote in a timely fashion. In 2005, the vote occurred in June just days before the new BOG terms were to begin on July 1. In 2005, the slate of candidates had only 9 candidates, one nominee for each seat open that year. House members had to fill an unexpired term in 2005.
State law requires at least two nominees for each seat to be elected during BOG elections. There are also provisions for when the vote must take place.
This year’s slate of candidates included 14 names, short of the 16 candidate statutory requirement, but closer to the requirements of state law than in recent years.
Leatherwood was the leading vote getting among House nominees with 110 votes. He is a lawyer from Waynesville and the corporate treasurer for AdvantageWest, an economic development commission focusing on western North Carolina.
Purnell Swett, who received 108 votes, was the former head of Robeson County schools during the mid 1990s. According to The Associated Press, Swett was convicted in 1998 of a misdemeanor for taking more than $17,000 from the school system along with the system’s finance office. He received a 45-day suspended sentence and ordered to pay some of the money back. Part of the plea deal allowed Swett to not acknowledge any guilt in the case.
The other new member elected by the House, Marshall B. Pitts Jr., served as major of Fayetteville from 2001 to 2005.
One notable nominee who was not elected by the House was Michael Brader-Araje, the entrepreneur who has made investments in the state in education through the Michael and Laura Brader-Araje Foundation. Brader-Araje was on the Senate’s slate of candidates in 2005, but his name was removed from consideration on the floor, along with three other candidates.
While the House has finished its nomination procedure, the Senate still must vote on its slate of candidates. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a slate of nine candidates for eight open seats, falling short of the statutory requirements.
No date for a vote was announced during the meeting.
Among the Senate’s slate of candidates include five current BOG members – R. Steve Bowden, John W. Davis, III, Peter Hans, Adelaide Daniels Key, and Estelle Sanders.
The other nominees include Frank A. Daniels, Jr., former publisher of the News and Observer; Ann Goodnight, wife of SAS CEO and founder Jim Goodnight; Clarice Cato Goodyear, retail executive with Cato, and Luther Hodges Jr.
Hodges Jr., son of former U.S. Commerce Secretary North Carolina Gov. Luther Hodges, was among the nominees in 2005 whose name was omitted from the Senate ballot prior to a vote. Senators Phil Berger and Neal Hunt supported his nomination.