Voters next week will face a battery of choices among obscure candidates for state races that unfortunately generate little publicity or attention. There is one race, however, that we can safely make an enthusiastic and confident recommendation: N.C. Rep. Dale Folwell of Winston-Salem for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor.
He is a rare, outstanding public servant with good sense and a common touch.
I’ve watched him for years, first as a member of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education and later as a member of the State House.
He has weathered personal tragedy that would have crippled lesser men. Unlike too many politicians these days, he has his priorities in order. He went to Raleigh to make things better for the people of this state, not to serve as a whipsaw against the other party.
With bipartisan support, he sponsored and received approval for a laundry list of legislation. “I never wanted to come home and say I couldn’t get anything done because I was in the minority party,” he told me recently.
He has gotten a lot done, and the GOP made him the House pro tem last year.
“For all our lives we have seen people divide this state by east and west, Republican and Democrat, city-country, black-white, liberal-conservative. But we’re staring down the barrel of debt that is going to prevent us from doing the things we need to do in this state. There is a dam of disgust in North Carolina, and the gap between the people and government has never been wider. Somebody has got to fix it, and that’s what I do,” he said.
Folwell was a less-than-average student at West Forsyth High who checked out every morning at 10 a.m. to work at a Clemmons motorcycle shop as part of a business curriculum. He didn’t catch fire until age 21 when someone …