Fred Crawford, a Swain County resident, decided to run for county commission chairperson in late 2025. But unlike the vast majority of other candidates running for offices across the state, Crawford couldn’t just pay a fee and submit a form.
Instead, as an unaffiliated candidate, he had to find 397 people willing to sign a petition to add him to the November ballot. The extra work didn’t phase Crawford.
“The bottom line is that this country's a two-party system,” he said. “I'm not going to bang my head and be upset about that. I'll just work within the system.”
He set up a Facebook page to get signatures and hosted four campaign events between December and February.
“I had a lot of comments when I first decided to run. ‘Fred, you're not from around here,’” Crawford said. “So, I knew right then that I'd have to shake a lot of hands and get in front of people and talk to people. And so far that's proven effective.”
Crawford is one of dozens of unaffiliated candidates running for election. But unlike members of North Carolina recognized four parties: Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green Party, unaffiliated candidates must gather signatures on a petition from registered voters in the region they hope to represent. For the general election, these petitions have to be filed by primary election day. Then county boards have until April 6 to verify the signatures.
The number of signatures required varies by office in North Carolina. To be added to the U.S. presidential ballot, an unaffiliated candidate must get signatures from 1.5% of all registered N.C. voters who voted in the most recent election for N.C. Governor.
In the 2024 presidential election, for example, an unaffiliated candidate would have needed 83,873 signatures to be listed to run for the White House. But for local races, it’s often a much lower threshold based on the number of registered voters in the district.
Acquiring these signatures is a lot of work and may create a high barrier for unaffiliated candidates, political scientist and Western Carolina University Professor Chris Cooper said.
“Unaffiliated folks have to raise money just to get on the ballot in the first place. And a lot of people have found that that is much more difficult than they thought,” Cooper said.
“This number of signatures doesn't seem that bad until you're in the field really trying to collect them.”
The effort can be costly. Some unaffiliated candidates hire paid staff to gather signatures or send out thousands of mailers in the hopes of getting enough signed and returned.
Vicki Hyatt, another unaffiliated candidate in Western North Carolina, said she was not intimidated by the process of gathering signatures.
The former publisher of the Haywood community newspaper, The Mountaineer, said the process was not difficult.
“I'm so used to asking people questions. Like, that's my life, asking people questions, so I could do that very, very easily,” Hyatt said.
She didn't find the process burdensome.
“I think it is a beautiful process, and I was delighted to do it,” she said.
For candidates like Hyatt, gathering signatures for the petition is part of campaigning.
“I feel like I'm 2,000 people ahead of everyone else right now because we have had that many conversations about my campaign.”
Hyatt launched an email newsletter to promote her campaign and has hosted two meetings to hear ideas from the community that would become her priorities if elected as county commissioner.
Are there more unaffiliated candidates this year?
Last year, four parties lost state recognition: The Constitution, Justice for All, No Labels, and We the People, according to WRAL. Members of those parties are now among the unaffiliated candidates.
As of April 22, there are 51 unaffiliated candidates in the running for the November election, a slight increase from 49 in 2024.
Every year there is an expectation that there will be more unaffiliated candidates, Cooper said, but the number has been pretty steady.
“It's just not happening, and I think what that tells us is this is a structural problem, not a function of the individual motivations of candidates,” Cooper said.
More than half of the unaffiliated candidates on the ballot this year are running for a county commission seat.
School boards elections in North Carolina were historically overwhelmingly non-partisan, meaning candidates were listed as unaffiliated on ballots in most counties. However, the trend has shifted in the last decade or so as an increasing number of counties have moved to hold partisan elections for public school boards.
In 2024, 52 school districts held partisan elections, while prior to 2013, only 10 districts held partisan elections, according to EdNC. Across the state, there are just six unaffiliated candidates for school board.
Traditionally, the western part of the state has been more fertile ground for unaffiliated candidates, Cooper said.
“It is a little unusual, and there is a little bit of a history there. So the very first unaffiliated candidate to ever be elected as county commission chair was Jack Debnam in Jackson County, North Carolina,” Cooper said, adding that three Transylvania County Commissioners became unaffiliated in 2019. They were not re-elected.
Three unaffiliated candidates are running for office in Cherokee County, with two candidates in Clay, Haywood and Swain counties. In Mitchell, Avery and Graham counties, there is one unaffiliated candidate on the ballot.
The state board publishes an updated list of candidates. NCSBE spokesperson Pat Gannon confirmed to NC Local that the current list has all of the state-level unaffiliated candidates, but there mat be some county-level candidates who have not been entered into the system yet.
Locally, these candidates are already campaigning, and the final list will be on the ballot before early voting begins for the general election on Oct. 15.
Why do people choose to run as unaffiliated candidates?
Crawford, the Swain county commission hopeful, said he didn't consider joining a party to run for office.
“I've always voted for the candidate, and not the party,” Crawford said. “I've always been an independent thinker, independent voter. So it just made sense for me to run as an independent.”
Crawford, who managed a real estate division for a regional water and electric utility in Texas for more than two decades, said Swain County is at a crossroads.
“Swain County is in a place where changes could happen, and without some vision, some leadership, then Swain County could change in a way that we don't want,” Crawford said.
County officials have considered a number of important issues, including zoning concerns, an animal control ordinance, the construction of a new middle school, a data center moratorium and other issues.
In Haywood County, Hyatt said she chose to run unaffiliated because she’s not a registered voter of any party.
“I'm not coming at this with a particular set of ideals,” Hyatt said. She shared that during her focus groups, two campaign priorities bubbled to the top: affordable housing and farmland preservation.
For Cherokee County Board of Education Candidate Tom Beasley, being unaffiliated was part of the journey.
“I believe it should be focused on the students, not politics. You know it should be about education and not party labels. The decision should be based on what's best for Cherokee County, the kids, and the families,” Beasley, who has been an adoptive and foster parent for 16 years, said.
Beasley attributed his choice to run without partisan affiliation to divine intervention. He said that he felt a calling to run for office but “due to his disobedience,” he missed the deadline to update his registration to Republican.
“I said all right Lord, I'm still going to do it because you'll provide if this is what you got you know planned out for me. So I just went ahead and I ran as unaffiliated and surprisingly within four weeks I had all the signatures that were required,” he said.
Beasley is one of three unaffiliated candidates in Cherokee County where a school consolidation plan has created controversy for nearly a decade. Phillip “Flip” Watson and Carmen Garland are also running as unaffiliated candidates for the Cherokee County school board. They did not respond to NC Local for comment.
How often do unaffiliated candidates get elected?
Getting elected without party support is a tough challenge in North Carolina, but unaffiliated candidates for local offices fare better than office seekers higher up the ballot.
“No question, local candidates have a better chance. And let's be clear, none of them have a very good chance at all,” Cooper said.
In 2024, North Carolina had the most ever unaffiliated candidates win seats – most as county commissioners, he said.
“That was still fewer than 20 people. That includes every candidate from dog catcher to president of the United States,” Cooper said.
“We've seen three people get elected to the North Carolina General Assembly as unaffiliated candidates. Two of those switched parties immediately after getting elected,” he said
“If we are looking for those swing voters, a small number of people who do kind of swing back and forth, those are the people who tend to be unaffiliated,” Cooper said.
However, registered party members are more likely to vote.
“The unaffiliated voters have never shown up to vote at the same rates as Democrats and Republicans. So there's this almost systematic mismatch between interest in the voters and the candidates,” Cooper said.
This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.