Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page is one step closer to heading to the state Senate after his primary opponent, longtime Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden), conceded following partial hand recounts failing to change the 23 votes by which he was trailing.
In an interview with North State Journal, Page said he was looking forward to getting to work.
“I ran for the right reasons, and now I’m excited and looking forward to transitioning in January after the November election and helping the citizens of the district and also in North Carolina,” Page said.
Page, a native of Rockingham County, has spent more than 40 years in law enforcement, including 28 years as the county’s sheriff. He also served as president of the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association (2010-11) and still sits on its executive committee.
Now, with a win in the general election, he’s set to join the General Assembly.
“This race was very contentious and it had a lot of negatives come through in it that I’ve never seen before,” said Page, adding that he knew it would be a “tough race” and acknowledging the millions spent against him during the contest.
When asked if the push by Berger for a casino in Rockingham County factored into how tight the race ended up being, Page said he thought the topic “sparked a lot of the controversy,” and “how that went down” turned people off from Berger.
In November, Page will face Democrat Steve Luking. However, the Senate District 26 seat is rated at +9 Republican by the John Locke Foundation’s Partisan Index. Page says he anticipates getting past Luking and looks forward to being seated in the Senate next January.
One of the items he has his eye on in is raising teacher pay.
“I do think our teachers — if we’re going to maintain, hire and retain a quality workforce — we’ve got to pay our teachers well,” Page said. He also said that he’d like to get master’s degree pay bumps restored.
Page said it was important to work on funding K-12, colleges and workforce prep programs to support the workforce.
“That’s how we’re going to keep persons and kids and the future workers in our communities,” said Page. “I want kids, if they go to college or do training in community college, I want them to stay here in our county.”
Page said a “very big concern” at the state level on his mind is budgets, and he’d like to see the General Assembly set budgets like counties do and “have that budget set by July 1.”
On the recent priority of property taxes being taken up by both chambers of the legislature, including Berger’s moratorium proposal, Page said that would have been nice before counties conducted their revaluations.
“What I like to see is that conversation where when the revals are done and the rates go up, that they look at (staying) revenue neutral,” said Page. “And then from there, anything that’s done that would cause any tax increases to the citizens needs to be a full review by the local commissioner board in those counties.
“The last thing I want to see or hear is that people are being taxed out of their property.”
One platform item of Page’s that he says he will carry through on is repealing a portion of a 2023 law that made lawmakers custodians of their own records, giving them the ability to decide what documents were public records.
“There’s an old saying, you know: ‘When you do things in the dark, they will come to light,” Page said. “That’s exactly what happened with the casino conversation … the way it went about. And I think that upset a lot of people.
“I think that our elected officials can do a lot better than going dark on public record information.”
North State Journal also asked Page about a New York Times article published the afternoon Berger conceded the race.
The article described retiring U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) as saying Berger “has to go” and had become “too power hungry.” The article also highlighted a grudge between Berger’s former Chief of Staff Jim Blaine and Patrick Sebastian — Page’s recount spokesman, political strategist and pollster — over remarks that disparaged former Gov. Pat McCrory. Sebastian is McCrory’s nephew.
Before responding, Page asked Sebastian if he’d like to comment.
“The newspaper article mostly speaks for itself — it was time to make a change,” Sebastian said. “And we had a lot of people who were very frustrated with Sen. Berger’s leadership, tired of the way he was doing business, tired of the way he was running the Senate.”
Sebastian said when Page decided to run, it was a “game on.” He added people would be surprised how many people behind the scenes, from lawmakers to donors, had said they “were really sick of Phil Berger’s leadership,” but “when it came time to associate their name with an opposition push, so many of them were not willing to take that step.”
“And that’s why I have so much respect for Sheriff Page — he put himself out there,” said Sebastian. “He had to withstand $10-12 million dollars of false and malicious advertising but was still able to get up and go every day. Most people can’t imagine enduring a constant, omnipresent character assassination without it totally consuming their lives.”
Page agreed, stating that in all the races he’s been in, “I’ve never seen such a contentious race as this.”
He also said Blaine and political strategist Larry Shaheen had “miscalculated,” after which Sebastian said the issue needed to be brought up.
“Look, Jim Blaine said Page was a dupe being pushed out into the road and he was going to get hit by a car,” Sebastian said in a slightly raised tone. “He said that the sheriff may have to move out of the county when they were done with them. You had Larry Shaheen saying by the time they’re done, there should not be a Republican in that district who would consider voting for Sheriff Sam Page. They could not have been more wrong — their political instincts were as off as I’ve ever seen in politics in my life career.
“And to have that over-the-top bravado, to have that type of arrogance, to have that overconfidence that you’re these masters of the universe with the ability to convince voters to believe anything, as if they’re dopes … to be that wrong is really something and should feel humiliating. And that’s why I’m so proud of Sheriff Page. He focused on the people and proved the ‘oursiders’ wrong.”
Sebastian ended by saying Page didn’t run for special interest groups who can fund campaigns, he ran for the people in his district.
The 69-year-old Page responded, “Patrick, you said it all. I just never heard so much negatism.” While noting he had never met Blaine or Shaheen, Page said, “They miscalculated. I’ll say it: they totally miscalculated.”
