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Murphy – With only a few days left for candidates to file for the March 3, 2026, primary elections, contests have emerged in three of the four seats on the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners.
The candidate filing period ends at noon Friday. The deadline to register to vote in the primary is 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, 2026.
The most hotly contested board of commissioners race as of Monday is in District 1 (Andrews to Topton), where four-term incumbent Cal Stiles is defending his seat against challenges from former Andrews alderman and county commissioner Steve Jordan as well as retired schools superintendent Jeana Conley.
In District 3 (Murphy to Brasstown), incumbent Ben Adams has announced that he is not running for re-election. Two candidates filed for that seat as of Monday morning: Cherokee County Board of Education at-large member Steve Coleman and real estate broker Mark Stalcup.
In District 4 (Hothouse, Culberson, Ranger and Bellview), three-term incumbent Dan Eichenbaum has one challenger – Tom O’Leske, an accountant, U.S. Army Reserve veteran and former Florida detention center officer.
As of Monday, only Mark Stiles, the District 2 (Peachtree to Marble) commissioner appointed to fill a vacancy on the board a year ago, is unchallenged.
On the school board, Andrews businessman Stephen Dartez has filed to run for Coleman’s at-large seat. District 2 (Murphy) member Jeannie Gaddis was the only incumbent to file for re-election before Monday.
School board incumbent Shannon Raper of District 3 (Hiwassee Dam) filed to seek re-election Monday afternoon. School board incumbent Jason Murphy had not filed as of Tuesday morning.
Joy Stein, a Cherokee County businesswoman, filed Tuesday morning to run for a District 3 school board seat as a Democrat. She would be a rare Democratic Party candidate in Cherokee County, which has been dominated by the Republican Party for the last 15 years.
In District 1, Conley ran as a write-in candidate against Stiles in the 2022 general election and received over 22% of votes cast, with Stiles receiving 77.26% of the vote. Conley ran shortly after retiring as Cherokee County Schools superintendent.
Jordan ran against Stiles in the 2022 Republican primary in a three-person race that also included Jeff Tatham, a school board member. Jordan came in third in that primary race with 20.12% of the vote, Tatham received 34.3% and Stiles won with 45.57%. Winning 40% of the primary vote is enough to avoid a runoff election in North Carolina.
The 2026 primary would seem to be similar to the 2022 primary, with two challengers potentially splitting the vote and allowing the incumbent to win with less than half the ballots cast. A similar outcome could occur in the race for sheriff this year.
Incumbent Dustin Smith’s first term has been marred by a botched SWAT raid that cost the county a $5 million settlement in federal civil court, along with three jail escape attempts, including one that cost a detention officer his life.
As of Monday, Smith was challenged by Chris Wood, a retired N.C. Highway Patrol trooper, and Sam May, someone with no civilian law enforcement experience.
For school board, Stein could win by default if no one else files for that seat, making her the first Democrat to be elected to local office since 2010.
The 2010 general election included several Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated candidates. Worth noting, Jordan was elected county commissioner as a Democrat, edging out Stiles, who ran that year as an unaffiliated candidate. The Republican candidate, Steve Gerstman, came in third.
One other Democrat also won in 2010 – Keith Lovin, a three-term sheriff.
There has not been a Democrat candidate running for a local office in Cherokee County since the 2020 elections. Paul Wilson, a retired principal, ran for Cherokee County school board in 2024 as an unaffiliated candidate and lost.
On the Republican side, Dartez is an Andrews businessman who owned a mobile snow cone business and recently bought Burger Basket, a popular restaurant on Main Street that serves hamburgers, fried fish and other dishes.
On the other hand, Dartez is facing two counts of bringing a handgun onto school grounds on Sept. 29, 2023. According to his indictment, he knowingly possessed a 9mm semi-automatic pistol while on the Andrews High School campus.