Over the last couple of decades, Guilford County Commissioner Kay Cashion has been something of a battleship candidate.

A lot of people have come after her seat on the board, but she has a knack for ending up on the winning side of any election.

This year, Democratic contender Greg Drumwright came after Cashion hard in the Democratic Primary race for the at-large Board of Commissioners’ seat. However, in the end, Cashion wound up on top with 53 percent of the vote to Drumwright’s 47 percent.

Cashion was first appointed to the Board of Commissioners in 2004 after Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen left the board to head up the county’s deeds office.

Drumwright, an ordained reverend, ran for a seat on the Guilford County Board of Education four years ago but lost in a close race.

On Tuesday, May 17, the race between Cashion and Drumwright was extremely close at the beginning of the evening.  After early votes were posted – but before many precinct tallies came in – Drumwright had a very slight lead over the commissioner who’s been on the board for practically all of this century.

Cashion couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday night, but she no doubt had some nervous moments early in the evening until more precincts came in and her slight vote deficit turned into a relatively comfortable lead in the vote count.

Cashion, who ran a furniture shop near Irving Park for decades, will now go on to the general election to face a foe she knows well – former Republican Guilford County Commissioners Alan Branson, who has, like Cashion, served as chairman of the Board of Commissioners.

Branson said he wasn’t surprised that the at-large commissioner’s race on the Democratic side of the ticket turn out so close.  Though Cashion has a tremendous amount of name recognition due to her nearly two decades on the board, Branson said Drumwright had really been working hard during the campaign and getting people motivated.

“He had a lot of people out there working for him,” Branson said of Drumwright.

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