N.C. Senate District 40 is in central Mecklenburg County on its eastern border. Incumbent Democrat Joyce Waddell is seeking to be elected for the sixth time and is running against We the People candidate Jeff Scott. N.C. Senate District 40 is 52% Democrat, 12% Republican and 34% unaffiliated. It has the third-highest concentration of registered Democrats in the state.
Waddell has been an N.C. senator for five terms and is the first African-American woman to serve in that role. She was a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher for more than two decades and a former CMS board member. In the most recent legislative session, she supported legislation to pay teachers favorably for their seniority and their advanced degrees. She also supported bills to codify reproductive freedom for women, protect domestic violence victims and to eliminate taxes on government retirees. She has a Ph.D. from UNC Greensboro and a master’s from UNC Charlotte, where the student health center is named after her. Her late husband, E.E. Waddell, was a longtime educator and administrator in CMS. Waddell High School is named after him. (Age ~80)
We The People Jeff Scott
Scott appears to be a banking and technology consultant who relocated from California in 2011 after the financial crisis. He is the former chair of the Mecklenburg County Libertarian Party. He has run unsuccessfully for a number of roles including city council in 2017 as well as for U.S.Congress and N.C. Senate. He is critical of the “military industrial complex” and says, "The hard truth about Charlotte is that politics is dominated by the Democratic Party activists, and opposition is weak at best." (Age ~67)