Buncombe County – Weaverville resident Kristie Sluder’s decision to run for the North Carolina 49th Senate District, which encompasses all of Buncombe County, is not without its challenges. The district has consistently voted Democrat since its creation in 2003, setting the stage for an uphill battle for Sluder’s Republican campaign.
The list was long when the Tribune asked Kristie Sluder why she chose to run. Naming the transgender agenda in schools anti-Israel, anti-police, anti-parent, in short, she said it’s the current occupier of the seat, Julie Mayfield, that’s made her decide to run for the office.
This isn’t the first time Sluder has run for office. “I ran for congress in ’22 when the new district 14th was created. But things changed when the NC Court of Appeals put it back together as 11th, and Madison [Cawthorne] entered the race. That whole thing was a fiasco with the courts. So, the short answer is yes.” she told the Tribune. “It’s all these progressive, militant agendas they want to force on everybody,” stated Sluder, summing up her sentiments about Mayfield.
In Asheville, you have a one in 16 chance of being a crime victim or a witness [to a crime],” she goes on to cite low-barrier shelters as part of the problem. “It’s a recipe for disaster,” explained Sluder, who has a master’s degree in social work, a licensed clinical addiction specialist, and a certified correctional health care specialist. “What I see in the tea leaves is high crime, rent rates not going down, and people’s money just not going as far as it needs to go.”
She believes the progressives in the Democrat Party are leaving the rest of the party behind, and according to her, she would know. “My husband is a good Democrat. An old-school Truman Democrat. They [the progressives] don’t represent their party anymore.”
Sluder is a Graham County, North Carolina, native who came to Asheville in 1988 because there were no jobs for her in Graham. She went to Oak Hill High School in Virginia. “I came here with 300 bucks, a car, and a job,” she recounted. “And that’s what I needed, and I’ve never looked back.”
“What we have in Asheville, in the center of Asheville, does not represent the people of this county. People in this county just want to work and make a good living, pay a decent rent, enjoy their family, go on vacation, have access to health care, have a say in their child’s education,” said Sluder. “You know, that’s another thing that blew my mind, that this school board wanted to workshop parent rights…what they wanted was to not tell parents when their child was thinking about transiting…they made the parents out to be the enemy.”
Asked what she’d like to accomplish for the people, the first thing is trying to get high rent costs under control. She said part of the solution is restricting out-of-state developers from buying housing, turning it into vacation rentals, and leaving local mom-and-pops alone. She then said crime is next on her list and making sure law enforcement has the personnel and resources to enforce the laws. Sluder also wants to tackle the low-barrier shelter, which allows people with an addiction to bring their addiction into their shelters by getting into a drug program. “Low-barrier shelters is a way to warehouse them until they die,” explained Shuler.
To learn more about Sluder, you can visit her website, sluderforsenate.com.
Full Discloser: Sluder has written unregistered guest commentaries for the Weaverville Tribune but did not receive monetary compensation for them.