Republican nominee Dave Boliek won the seat for State Auditor with 49.46% of the vote, unseating Democrat incumbent Jessica Holmes, who received 47.52% of the vote.
“I’m very humbled and grateful that the voters of North Carolina elected me to be their next state auditor,” Boliek told the Carolina Journal. “I was born and raised in this state, and I’ve lived in many different communities. When campaigning statewide, you get to drive on roads that you may have ridden on in the past, retrace steps, and find some other roads you haven’t driven on. You get to meet people across the state in lots of different stations in life, people that are business folks, people that are working people, all types of North Carolinians you get to hear from them, and to me, that was the most rewarding part of the campaign period is getting to meet people one-on-one and get to know them.”
Boliek won with over 2.7 million votes, compared to Holmes, who received over 2.6 million votes. Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Holmes after Democrat Auditor Beth Wood’s resignation last December. Libertarian candidate Bob Drach received 3.01 percent of the vote, equating to 165,059 votes.
“I have spent 27 years practicing law, and during that time, I’ve also run businesses,” Boliek told the Carolina Journal earlier this year. “I’ve got the maturity to be in the office, to lead the office. I don’t anticipate going into the state auditor’s office with a zip lock bag full of #2 pencils and sitting behind a desk and going through numbers. The elected state auditor ought to go in, evaluate the team, decide what team is necessary, create a culture, build a strategic plan, and lead the organization toward results.”
Boliek has referred to Holmes as “the disappearing auditor,” telling the Carolina Journal that “I have not seen a thing from her.”
“I have not let the moss grow on the bottom of my feet,” continued Boliek. “I have a really worked, and I promised primary opponents — I had five primary opponents — I’ve told each one of them that when I went to the run-off, then I would go out and work every single day as hard as I could to win the race and and I fulfilled that promise, I really did, I worked as hard as I could and I think it paid off.”
In May, Boliek won the nomination, after beating out Republican Jack Clark in a runoff, 53%-46.7%, respectively.
Boliek told the CJ that between the primary, the runoff, and the general election he put 46,000 miles on his car.
“We’re going to start day one with a comprehensive audit of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and I’m not backing off that,” said Boliek. “I think the people of North Carolina deserve a well-functioning, efficient DMV. It hasn’t been addressed in many, many years. Because of that, I will conduct a comprehensive financial and economic efficiency audit of the DMV, and we will come up with some solid recommendations to the legislature and the governor’s office on how to make that agency work better for the people.”
Boliek told CJ that his second priority is to examine the process for appropriating dollars for disaster relief in western North Carolina.
“We’re going to take a hard look at how the dollars appropriated for disaster relief in western North Carolina,” said Boliek.
He promised to examine how those funds have been spent and to find clear answers as to the return on investment of funds.
“We anticipate being able to send teams into western North Carolina to ask the people on the ground at the impact level what they need, what they received, and what they have not received so that we can get a full picture and a debrief,” he said. “That way, when a disaster like that happens in North Carolina again, we’ve got solid data points that we can use to respond as a state efficiently and effectively to those types of disasters. That’s where the state auditor’s office can play a vital role in helping other state agencies which help taxpayers.”