Politics

Flat Rock among top voting precincts in NC

By Bill Moss, Published: July 16, 2012

FLAT ROCK — Flat Rock showed one of the highest turnouts of any precinct in the 11th Congressional District, where two Republican candidates are vying for the nomination in the redrawn GOP-friendly district.

A campaign worker waving a VancePatterson sign said campaign workers had called Flat Rock the heaviest voting precinct in the 17-county district. Patterson faces Mark Meadows in the runoff. Meadows' wife, Debbie, held a sign at Greenville Highway and the Village Center Drive.

Meadows was working the Grassy Creek precinct in Mitchell County. He described both as strongholds that the campaign had targeted. "By our informal exit polling, we were getting about 3-to-1," he said of the Mitchell County polling place.

The campaign made 23,000 personal calls to encourage Meadows supporters to go ahead and vote, he said. "Our goal was to try to get 5,000 early voters," he said on Monday.

It may have worked. Henderson County ranked third among all counties in the state in early voting turnout, NC Civitas reported.

"We had over 1,500 voters," said Henderson County elections director Beverly Cunningham. Only Mecklenburg and Vance County, which had a hot county commission runoff, had more early voters. "I’m sure it’s the interest in the Meadows-Patterson race," Cunningham said.