A resident of Chatham County for 45 years, Jimmy Pharr is running as a Republican against Commissioner Mike Dasher to represent Dist. 2 on Chatham County’s Board of Commissioners.
He’s worked as a college Bible Professor — teaching the Old and New Testaments — and his main goals if elected would be to “respect citizens’ personal liberty and property rights” through “common-sense” zoning and taxes, and creating jobs with a competitive tax structure and reasonable regulations.
“The makeup of this county (including the fact that 65% are rural), is not reflected in the makeup of elected leaders. Four of 5 commissioners are Progressive Democrats. The local NC Senate and House seats are Democrats. Our nonpartisan School Board, Town Council, and Pittsboro mayor have no registered Republicans,” he wrote in his September questionnaire response. “This is a whopping imbalance — an unbridled monopoly really. This is not healthy.”
In his questionnaire response, Pharr criticized Democratic responses to COVID-19, suggesting their reaction to the coronavirus has not been influenced by medicine.
“Probably one of the main things, for me and for many, many others, is the whole thing with school not being open. And, of course, I would love for them to reopen tomorrow,” he told the News + Record in an interview regarding his thoughts on how the pandemic has been handled in Chatham. He added that his 14-year-old granddaughter recently made the cheerleading team at Northwood High School, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, he is disappointed he won’t get to watch her.
“The problem is, as a county commissioner, I don’t know that there’s too terribly much I can do, because that’s a board of education, and we handle their money, but we don’t really so much tell them what to do,” Pharr said. “Part of me feels like my hands as a commissioner might be partially tied on how to deal with virus stuff. Because it’s either in the hands of the governor or Board of Education. And the businesses, well that’s in the hands of the governor too.”
He is running as a team with the other Republican commissioner candidates, Jay Stobbs and Commissioner Andy Wilkie. As a team, they prioritize restoring the Veterans Memorial (the Confederate monument removed by the BOC in Pittsboro in 2019), repealing county-wide zoning and reducing property taxes and government spending. Pharr agrees with these priorities, those he emphasized he’d like the Veterans Memorial to be addressed through “law and order.”
Not on the group’s flyer but equally important to Pharr are his principles on faith, family, schools, jobs and success — priorities he outlines in an advertisement he’s planning in an upcoming edition of the News + Record.
“I am governed by biblical and conservative principles, whose priorities are the God who created me, the wife He gave me, the children He loaned me, and a desire to serve them all and all others in my path,” he wrote in that statement, which emphasized the ability for people to overcome adversity, and shared the story of his own son Trey, who faced challenges growing up due to having Cerebral Palsy.
“I’ve worn a lot of hats. You know, I’ve worn a lot of different job kinds of professional hats. I’ve worn the hat of a parent, the hat of a grandparent, I have a husband hat, you know, all that,” Pharr said. “This is one hat that I never thought I’d be wearing — and were it up to me, I’d probably still be sitting in front of my Bible class or in private counseling sessions for some of my students than doing this whole thing.”
Though Pharr hopes to win, he said he “won’t lose a minute’s sleep” if he doesn’t, because his life’s biggest priorities — faith and family — will still be there. He is most worried for the possibility of only one Republican candidate winning, as he feels one Republican cannot accomplish any of the team’s campaign goals against four Democratic commissioners.
“Truthfully, what I don’t want is to wake up the next morning and find out I’ve been the only one to win,” he said. “I don’t want to be a one versus four. The only thing I hope and I would say if I had the opportunity, if we would all lose, is I would remind the people who win to not forget that 48% who didn’t vote for you. That’s a lot of people.”
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com.