Two candidates in Buncombe County’s primary elections are facing formal challenges to their eligibility for office. At a special meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 20, the Buncombe County Board of Elections will hear disputes regarding Asheville City Council candidate Antanette Mosley — the city’s current vice mayor — and Buncombe County sheriff candidate Victor “Vic” Morman.
Mosley has been under scrutiny by state elections officials since Dec. 15, following reports that she had claimed permanent-resident property-tax exemptions in Georgia while voting in North Carolina and serving on the Asheville City Council. A subsequent report by WLOS found that Mosley did not live at the Kenilworth address she claims on her voter registration. North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesperson Jason Tyson confirmed Jan. 8 that a state-level investigation remains ongoing.
But Mosley’s Council candidacy wasn’t formally disputed until the Jan. 8 deadline for filing challenges. In a document submitted to the BCBOE, former city of Asheville employee and erstwhile Council candidate John Miall cited news reports about Mosley’s multiple residences and voting history. North Carolina state law requires candidates to be able to vote for the office they’re seeking; only Asheville residents are eligible to vote for Council. Mosley could not have legally voted in city elections, as public records show she did, while also claiming Georgia tax exemptions at the same time.
Miall was not immediately available for comment on the challenge. Mosley directed all requests for comment on her ongoing legal issues to her attorney, Asheville-based Eugene Ellison.
“Nothing new, nothing here, I expect she will be cleared,” Ellison responded via email when asked about Miall’s challenge.
Allegations against Morman
The BCBOE also received a formal challenge Jan. 6 against Victor “Vic” Lamar Morman, a Republican candidate for Buncombe County Sheriff. Tina Lunsford, a Republican living in Candler, alleged that Morman hadn’t been registered as a Republican for 90 days before filing to run, as required by state law for partisan races.
Lunsford told BPR she supports Republican sheriff candidate Gary Parris but is not formally affiliated with his campaign. She provided Morman’s recent voter registration documents. Those forms show he registered as a Democrat on Sept. 8, then switched to Republican Sept. 19. He also organized his campaign committee as a Democrat Sept. 11, then amended it to reflect his Republican affiliation Sept. 26 — a week after the 90-day cut off.
Public records show that Morman voted in Buncombe County’s Democratic primaries in 2008 and 2022. Reached by phone Jan. 8, he confirmed his recent change to the Republican Party but did not mention his brief Democratic affiliation. He filed to run for office Dec. 18, exactly 90 days after the switch.
“There’s no reason why I didn’t change [registration] before then,” Morman said, when asked why he’d waited to change his registration if he had planned to run on the Republican ticket. “It just so happened to be the time that I changed it.”
If the BCBOE upholds either challenge at the Jan. 20 hearing, officials will have to reprint ballots for the primary election, which opens to early voting Thursday, Feb. 12. That quick turnaround, imposed by state law, “definitely poses some administrative challenges for us,” Elections Director Corinne Duncan told the board at its Jan. 6 meeting.
Questions resurface over Keith Young’s residency
Although Asheville City Council candidate Keith Young wasn’t formally challenged this election cycle, several people reached out to BPR with concerns over his residency. The allegations resurface issues first raised in 2017, as reported by the Citizen-Times, about Young maintaining his primary residence outside Asheville city limits in Arden.
At a 2017 BCBOE hearing, Young testified under oath that he spent time both at the Arden home, which he purchased in 2016, and his parents’ home in Asheville, where he is registered to vote. He said that the Asheville property was his principal residence and that he lived in Arden mostly on weekends. The board unanimously upheld Young’s eligibility to serve on Asheville’s council, to which he’d been elected in 2015. (Young ran for a second term in 2020 but finished fourth in the nonpartisan race for three available seats.)
However, one of Young’s Arden neighbors told BPR that the candidate now spends substantially more time at the property than he told the board in 2017. The neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid personal or professional reprisal, said Young “is there routinely every day” and parks his car there on the majority of nights, including over the recent holidays. The neighbor also noted that Young appears to share the home with his wife or romantic partner.
In response to a series of questions about his current residency, Young provided the following statement via email: “In 2017, I testified under oath that I lived at both the Asheville and Arden addresses. The Buncombe County Board of Elections was fully aware of that fact and, after a hearing, ruled unanimously in my favor. That ruling was made with full knowledge that I maintained both properties and stayed at both.”
Young did not explicitly confirm that his current residency situation is the same as it was in 2017.
