A Wake Forest resident, Shinica Thomas, was selected last week as the candidate in District 6 for the Wake County Board of Commissioners. She replaces Commissioner Greg Ford, who will serve out his term that ends in December. Ford said he will be moving out of the state.
The Wake County Democratic Party’s executive committee held a virtual meeting on July 21 to vote on the three candidates. Thomas won with 53 percent of the vote, Angela Scioli had near 40 percent and former Raleigh City Council member Randall Stagner had about 6 percent. The candidates had to be registered Democrats and live in District 6, which is the northern part of Wake County.
“I am grateful for my Democratic colleagues’ literal vote of confidence in me,” Thomas said Tuesday night after the vote. “I look forward to campaigning and to the November election.”
Her statement to the committee before the vote read: “Our government should reflect the people it serves and I stand ready to lead based on our shared values. I am not a politician. I am a wife, a mother, volunteer and active Democrat committing to vote in a manner that ensures critical investments in our schools, our most vulnerable residents and ensuring the quality of life that makes us all love Wake County with a leave-no-one-behind approach. I believe that a rising tide of wealth and opportunities in this county should lift all of us.”
If elected, Thomas will be the first county commissioner from Wake Forest since Merrie Hedrick, who served from 1986 to 1994.
Thomas is a leader with the N.C. Coastal Pines Girl Scouts and has served as the first vice president of the Democratic Women of Wake County.
In Wake Forest she was a candidate for the town board in 2013, served two terms on the Recreation Advisory Board, was the Heritage High School representative on the Wake County Public School Advisory Council, was the fundraising coordinator for several youth athletic organizations and had been in school PTAs as her two sons went to various schools. She and her husband, Raymond Thomas, and their sons volunteered as math and science tutors, helped out at the Wake Forest Boys & Girls Club and both coached and played basketball in the town recreation leagues.
Thomases’ father was in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Fort Bragg when she was in high school, which is where she met her husband. After a few years moving around the country while he was in the U.S. Army, they came back to North Carolina and moved to Wake County in 2001, to Wake Forest in 2007. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s in government.
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