Crowded GOP Lt. Governor’s race includes NC newcomer who’s never voted in the state

A prophetic evangelist who said God told her she was Jewish. A long-time Democrat turned Republican. A sheriff. Another Christian minister endorsed by Ted Nugent. Several current and former state lawmakers. A head of the opaque “Election Education Foundation.” And a paramedic from Florida who believes COVID is a hoax, has never voted in North Carolina, and has lodged unfounded accusations about the integrity of the election process.

Eleven Republicans are running in the March 5 primary for lieutenant governor; the winner will face one of three Democrats — state Sen. Rachel Hunt, Ben Clark or Mark H. Robinson — in the General Election this fall.

Although largely a ceremonial position, the lieutenant governor does preside over the state Senate. However, they vote only in case of a tie. The lieutenant governor sits on several boards, including the Energy Policy Council, the State Board of Education, Charter Schools Review Board and the State Board of Community Colleges. If the governor is out of the state or otherwise unable to serve, the lieutenant governor is Acting Governor. For example, when Gov. Roy Cooper was in Japan on an economic trip last year, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson assumed that role.

Nonetheless, the lieutenant governor can parlay their seat to higher office. Since the 1800s, five lieutenant governors have ascended to the governorship. Most recently, Bev Perdue, a Democrat, was second-in-command from 2001 through 2009. She then served one term as governor from 2009 to 2013.

Although she’s seeking the state’s second-highest office, Marlenis Hernandez Novoa, who is from Florida, has never voted in North Carolina since registering in 2021, public election records show.

In a phone interview, Hernandez Novoa, who lives in Raleigh, acknowledged not having voted. Although Raleigh did not hold elections in 2021 or in 2023, there were statewide, federal, Wake County and judicial elections in which she could have voted in 2022. Hernandez Novoa blamed the omission on ballot irregularities. Yet her account of what occurred contradicts the public record or could not be corroborated.

She said she attempted to vote in 2020. However, state records show she did not register until July 2021. Nonetheless, Hernandez Novoa told Newsline by phone that “I went to where I was supposed to vote. The Democrats were running those two facilities.” 

However, polling places are not run by political parties. Instead election workers are employed by their respective counties. Election judges and site coordinators include members of both major parties – or unaffiliated voters.

“I showed my driver’s license and next thing you know, I get pushed. It was during the fake pandemic, what I call the COVID hoax,” Hernandez Novoa, a paramedic, said. “And I didn’t want to cause a show.”

Voter ID was not in effect in 2020, so Hernandez Novoa would not have been required to show her driver’s license unless had tried to register that day. Then she would have been asked for proof of identification, and if she didn’t have it, would have also been offered a provisional ballot, as election workers are instructed to turn no voter away for lack of ID.

Hernandez Novoa said she and her family then went to a second early voting location, at a church. “The same exact thing happened,” she said. “So my husband said, ‘Let’s just do mail-in ballots.’ So that’s what we did. I voted for President Trump.” Wake County did not use any churches for early voting in 2020.

But she told Newsline that the mail-in ballots “didn’t make it to where they were supposed to make it.” 

Hernandez Novoa then alleged that “a couple of days later, there were about four to seven white crates full of mail in ballots on my land.”

She said she reported the incident to the Wake County Sheriff’s Office, who allegedly told her to call the FBI. Shortly afterward, people in “two gray cars” picked up the crates of ballots, she said.

The Wake County Board of Elections told Newsline it received no reports of mail-in ballot irregularities in the 2020 election. And according to the Wake County Sheriff’s Office call logs obtained under public records law, there were no calls for service to Hernandez Novoa’s Raleigh address in 2020. However, there were more than 100 calls for service to that address from 2021 to the present – ranging from requests “to talk with an officer,” and reports of “fraud, “harassment,” and “communicating threats” – including 10 so far this year.

In addition a midyear campaign finance report contained $1,600 in in-kind contributions that “nestle right up to the line of legality,” Chris Cooper, an elections expert and director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University told Newsline after reviewing the documents.

Hernandez Novoa is her own campaign treasurer. Three days after organizing her campaign committee, on April 23, 2023, Hernandez Nova’s husband, Darik Smart, gave the campaign an in-kind contribution of $300 to pay a salon for a photo shoot, according to the original midyear finance report.

Over the weekend of May 28 and 29, Smart spent $1,110 on “clothing for events,” including one purchase of $881. And in June, Smart made a smaller in-kind donation of $94 for a “campaign wardrobe.” Hernandez Novoa’s original midyear finance report listed those contributions as expenditures, which the campaign reimbursed back to Smart.

As for Smart buying Hernandez Novoa’s clothes and seeking reimbursement, Cooper told Newsline. “I don’t recall seeing that particular strategy in the past.”

“Candidates cannot simply buy themselves new clothes for campaign events,” said Chris Cooper said “but they can buy some clothes that are directly tied to the campaign if they would not have bought them otherwise.”

Hernandez Novoa then amended the midyear report in late December 2023 and reclassified them as purely contributions, ostensibly with no reimbursement.

A review of other lieutenant governor candidates’ finance reports showed no one purchased clothing, either in-kind or with cash, for their campaigns.

Reached by phone, Hernandez Novoa said she “bought clothes with my own money” and that she purchases outfits at thrift or discount stores, or on sale. “Everything that you see me wear, almost all those clothes are from junior high school.”

In a follow-up email seeking additional clarification, Hernandez Novoa did not respond. A man named Joseph, who identified himself as her campaign manager, wrote in an email that “those clothes that her husband bought. It’s still with [the] tags. Why? Because he surprised her. Those clothes are not her style. It’s his money, not your money.”

Hernandez Novoa’s political views align in part with those held by many of Republican candidates for lieutenant governor. On immigration, though, her views are more progressive. She told Newsline that undocumented farmworkers, for example, should be allowed to remain in the U.S. “They want to provide for their children, we’re not going to just rip them out of that environment, or basically ship them back if they’ve been here for a long time.”

Asked how that stance squared with her support for Trump, who has called for mass deportations, she did not answer the question.

She told Newsline that her passion is education, but did not explain why she had not sought a school board seat or run for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. In a video from a campaign appearance, she told the audience that while she does not advocate burning books because that is arson, she supports taking the books out of the library but not returning them. She did not answer a question from Newsline as to whether she considered that theft.

Here are the Republican candidates for lieutenant governor, followed by the three Democratic candidates.

Deanna Ballard, former state senator from the northwestern part of the state who helped pass Voter ID. She would “protect kids from the woke agenda,” deport undocumented immigrants and defend gun ownership. She opposes abortion. As a legislator, she introduced several bills that became law, mostly in the field of education: the Reopen Our Schools Act of 2021, plus another that allowed virtual charter schools, whose academic performance is uneven, to apply for a 10-year charter. 

Amount raised for campaign:  $193,731
Amount spent: $94,555
Largest donor: Bob Luddy, charter school benefactor • $6,400

Peter Boykin, self-described “constitutionalist” from Mebane: “In both North Carolina and America, there’s an urgent need for comprehensive economic stimulation, border protection, quality education, medical freedom, secure elections, job creation, and sustained job security.”

Amount raised: $6,177
Amount spent: $6,086
Nearly all the money raised came from Boykin himself

Dana Rivera Douthit of Mooresville supports a complete ban on abortion, supports gun rights, bringing the Bible and prayer back into the schools. She told the congregation at the Gathering Church in November that “God called her” to run and also told her “that she’s Jewish.”

“A lot of churches are very uncomfortable bringing people in who are running for political office,” she said, in what appeared to be a campaign event at the church. “A special blessing on this house for doing that. … Politics needs Jesus.”

She says she would “rescue the children” by preventing “the far-left agenda from stealing their identity and destiny” and that she’s aligned with Mark Robinson, current lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate.

Amount raised:  $16,020
Amount spent:  $ 9,432
Largest donor: Leamber Rhoades of Rhoades Construction • $1,000

Jeffrey Elmore, state legislator from Alexander and Wilkes counties. He sponsored and passed legislation to repeal the Pistol Purchase Permit process in North Carolina, “passed legislation to fight the woke agenda of the far left,” and has sponsored many bills supporting charter schools, including virtual ones.

Amount raised:  $85,672
Amount spent:  $23,866
Largest donor: Friends of Tim Moore • $6,400

Marlenis Hernandez Novoa

Amount raised:  $11,673
Amount spent: $10,425
Largest donor:  Louis Edward Sarwicki III • $500
All but two of Hernandez Novoa’s receipts were in-kind contributions from herself or family members. 

Allen Mashburn of Seagrove, endorsed by Ted Nugent, has a background in Christian ministry. He wants to divert funds from the UNC System that are “only contributing to many of our ideological differences ….” Proposes requiring North Carolina to withdraw from the American Library Association, over a tweet by the group’s president that she is a Marxist lesbian.  Critical of the “left’s infatuation with green energy and their war on fossil fuels,” Mashburn states on his campaign website that in the lieutenant governor’s role as chair of the state’s energy policy council he will “lead — not be lead by the tree huggers and climate alarmists.”

Amount raised: $86,726
Amount spent: $84,869
Largest donor: Michelle and Ronald Jackson • $6,400 each

Jim O’Neill, Forsyth County prosecutor, says he’s tough on crime, wants to address substance abuse and mental illness. He was the GOP nominee and narrowly lost to Josh Stein the in the 2020 election for Attorney General.

Amount raised: $89,400    
Amount spent: $24,302
Largest donors: 17 people gave O’Neill the limit of $6,400

Sam Page, Rockingham County Sheriff. Lead the group Sheriffs for Trump and endorsed by Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson, who entered a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice after an investigation found he and his office had engaged in discriminatory law enforcement practices.

Page would “support North Carolina Farmers against crippling activist lawsuits,” meaning presumably, nuisance lawsuits like those filed against Smithfield Foods over the stench, flies and water pollution resulting from enormous hog and poultry farms. The legislature has all but outlawed that type of litigation.

Amount raised: $44,026
Amount spent: $13,232
Largest donors: Roy Carroll and Anthony Gulla, both in real estate, each $6,400

Ernest Reeves: Lost 10 local, state and federal contests as Democrat, then switched parties to become a Republican in 2022. Favors expanding Medicaid. Supports “good paying jobs, border security, tax breaks for small businesses, lower tuition costs for students, safe zones for our kids, apprenticeship programs for unemployed individuals, and a robust transportation system.” He’s a retired Army veteran.

Amount raised: $1,769
Amount spent: $1,769
No donors listed by name

Hal Weatherman, from Charlotte, he served as chief of staff to former North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and Forest’s mother, former U.S. Representative Sue Myrick. Worked for Madison Cawthorn, although Weatherman omits that experience from his website.

Head of Election Education Foundation, whose goal, according to the group’s website, “is to take digital snapshots of the NC Voter File, archive them, & track all updates with an eye towards movement with the highest correlation to fraud. All findings will be regularly published for the general public, policy makers, & election administrators in all 100 NC counties.”

Voter files with basic information are already publicly available; they don’t include Social Security numbers or details on whom individuals voted for.

Amount raised: $412,315
Amount spent:  $368,616
Largest donors: Leon J. Topalian, CEO of NuCor Steel, and Ann Cannon, $6,400 each

Seth Woodall, lawyer in Eden. Said he would fight inflation, which is not within the lieutenant governor’s power. He supports police and Second Amendment rights and opposes abortion, He would fight to ensure that “no student has any ideology forced upon them — teachers should teach, not push their own agenda on our children,” according to his campaign website.

Amount raised: $57,656
Amount spent: $82,593
Woodall loaned his campaign $1 million.

Democrats

Rachel Hunt, state senator from Mecklenburg County and the daughter of former Gov. Jim Hunt,  (who also served one term as lieutenant governor). She says would support public schools, environment, small businesses, veterans and rural North Carolina, and would defend reproductive rights. As a state senator, Hunt sponsored a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, to boost early childhood education and to establish an independent redistricting commission.

Amount raised: $442,598
Amount spent: $288,460
Largest donors: Jim Goodnight, CEO of the SAS Institute, and Jane Preyer, former director of the Southeastern Office of Environmental Defense Fund, both $6,400.

Hunt loaned her campaign $17,500.

Ben Clark, a retired lieutenant colonel in U.S. Air Force and a former state senator representing Hoke and Cumberland counties. Supports public schools, environment, farmers, veterans reproductive health care. While in the legislature, Clark sponsored bills to appropriate more funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities within the UNC System. Other sponsored bills include Medicaid expansion, a requirement to release police body-cam video after 48 hours.

Amount raised: $14,352
Amount spent: $12,979
Largest donors: Several contributed $500

Clark and his family loaned his campaign $57,142

Mark H. Robinson, retired Naval captain from Sampson County. Not related to the current Lt. Gov. Mark K. Robinson. A small businessman, he does not cite specific goals, only that he “advocates for economic, environmental and social needs of the state.” 

No campaign finance report filed.

Important dates for the 2024 primary. 

Feb. 15: Early in-person voting begins. People who have not registered can register and vote during this  period.

Feb. 27: The last day to request a mail-in absentee ballot.

March 2: Early in-person voting ends.

March 5: Primary day. Absentee ballots must be received by 7:30 p.m.

May 14: Runoffs, if needed.

Unaffiliated voters can vote in either party’s primary.