Lunenburg’s sole contested race not unusual in county

Published 10:46 am Thursday, October 29, 2015

There is only one contested race on the ballot in Lunenburg County – and that’s for the district-wide House of Delegates seat between incumbent Republican Tommy Wright and his Democrat challenger Greg Marston.

Otherwise, every other election in the county is uncontested — every constitutional officer, every school board, every supervisor.

“It’s not unusual for Lunenburg County,” said Carolyn Parsons, the county’s registrar for 19 years.

Lunenburg might be beyond the norm, but a number of area elections see candidates run unchallenged. In fact, there are times when no one even qualifies to have his or her name appear on the ballot, so it comes down to a write in contender.

In Buckingham County, the constitutional officers – clerk of court, commissioner of revenue, commonwealth’s attorney, sheriff and treasurer – are also all running unopposed. But Buckingham Registrar Margaret Thomas said is uncommon.

“This is very unusual for all of the constitutional officers to be unopposed,” Thomas said. “Occasionally, we would have no one run against the commonwealth’s attorney, but usually there is competition against the other officers.”

This year, there are even some area seats that don’t even have an official candidate on the ballot.

In Cumberland County, the District 1 supervisor seat is one of those seats where no one qualified to have their name appear on the ballot. The same holds true for Buckingham County’s District 1 school board race, where one of the two announced write-ins who have been actively campaigning, Thomas said.