Former Guilford County Commissioner Alan Branson is looking to remove the “former” from that title and add “at-large” in its place.
Branson took a big step in that direction on Tuesday, May 17, by handily defeating Alvin Robinson in the Republican Party Primary for the only at-large seat on the nine-member Board of Commissioners.
Branson pulled in 70 percent of the vote to Robinson’s 30 percent.
In November, Branson will face off against Democratic Guilford County Commissioner Kay Cashion, who currently occupies the at-large seat on the board and won the Democratic at large primary with 53 percent over Greg Drumwright who finished with 47 percent of the vote on Tuesday night. Early in the evening, Drumwright was leading Cashion, but as more precincts were reported Cashion took the lead and then increased the margin.
Tuesday night, as the highly favorable results came in in Branson’s favor, a relaxed Branson said he’d been working hard all day Tuesday up until the polls closed.
“Today, I’ve been north, south, east and west,” he said of hitting one polling place after another.
After he was done campaigning, he attended a watch party in Summerfield before heading to the Guilford County Republican Party headquarters.
Branson, who runs a family-owned trucking company, is a highly conservative politician who’s known for being extremely tight with taxpayer money. For the eight years, from 2012 to 2020, that Branson served on the board, he and the other commissioners in the Republican majority never raised property taxes, and, in fact, lowered the tax rate slightly a couple of times.
Robinson is a former fire department captain for the City of Greensboro and also a former part-time Guilford County Sheriff’s Department deputy.
Branson said the two get along well but added that they did not come across each other much on the campaign trail this year.
