Politics

Three plan to run for Dct. 3 seat as Lapsley announces retirement

By Bill Moss, Published: July 24, 2025

If nature abhors a vacuum, so, it would appear, does politics.

As word filtered down that three-term Commissioner Bill Lapsley does not plan to run for re-election in 2026, three candidates have already raised their hand and announced campaigns. Two homebuilders and a former county manager, Steve Wyatt, confirmed in interviews with the Lightning that they plan to run for the seat. All three are Republicans. Filing period for the seat opens on Dec. 1; the primary is March 3, 2026.

Lapsley said he plans to make a more formal announcement of his retirement at the Aug. 4 meeting of the Board of Commissioners, which he serves as chair.

“I’ve had calls from several” prospective candidates, he said on Wednesday, the same day Rudd Orr announced his candidacy on Facebook and in a news release sent to the Lightning. Later, in an interview with the newspaper, Mills River Mayor Shanon Gonce confirmed that he, too, plans to run for the District 3 seat.

In Henderson County, candidates for the Board of Commissioners must live in the district but are elected at-large in countywide voting. Precincts in District 3 are Hendersonville 1, Long John Mountain, Mills River North, Mills River South, Northwest, Pisgah View and Rugby.

As in the city of Hendersonville elections, which the Legislature moved from odd- to even-numbered years, candidates are getting an early start. That makes sense, Lapsley said, given the Dec. 1-19 filing period and the March primary.

“If you don’t announce until November or December you really don’t have a lot of time to campaign,” he said. “From that perspective, it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and announce.”

Here are the Lightning’s interviews with the candidates:

Shanon Gonce

Owner of Gonce Builders Inc., Gonce, 57, is a third generation county native who has been Mills River mayor since 2021, having been elected to the post twice by the town council.

Gonce looks forward to “just a little bit of a change,” he said. “I’ve been serving at Mills River 17 years. I hope I’ve done a pretty good job.”

He said when he looks at the details of Hendersonville’s Gen H comprehensive land-use plan, he worries that the city’s growth will encroach on volunteer fire department districts.

“Some of these fire departments could get absorbed or done away with if the growth goes as the comp plan shows,” he said. “It looks like they would expand all the way to Stony Mountain Road. It would do away with Mountain Home (fire & rescue). That’s one thing I’d like to look at.”

He’s also watching the ongoing discussions between Hendersonville and the county over water and sewer extensions and growth outside city borders.

“I’m really interested in this interlocal water agreement and how that’s going to affect municipalities,” he said. “Water and sewer pretty much does away with rural character if it’s on a major road.”

And he strongly opposes the Legislature’s move last December to outlaw downzoning, barring cities and counties from rezoning property to a lower density.

“I just feel like all the power has been swept away from town council,” he said. Currently in the process of drafting a new unified development ordinance, the town paid $180,000 for planning consultants to guide the document.

“We don’t even know that the stuff is gonna be worth us paying for,” he said. “I was already under contract (with the consultants) when they did all this. A big one here is a floodplain ordinance” and efforts to restrict development near waterways. “If we say ‘you can’t build here,’ that’s downzoning.”

Gonce said he’s taken his concerns to the county’s legislative delegation in Raleigh.

“I think at the county level I’d have a little bit more power than even a mayor,” he said. “I think I’d get a little more respect” in his appeal to the legislators to “ease up a little bit” on actions that usurp local government powers.

Rudd Orr

An eighth-generation native of the county, Orr, 28, is operations director at the high-end homebuilding company his father founded in 1986, B-K Construction, a volunteer firefighter and father of one, with one on the way.

“I’ve watched with pride as our community has grown, but I’ve also watched with concern as pressures from outside threaten to change our landscape, our values, and our way of life,” he said in his campaign announcement. “I believe Henderson County must be protected from becoming the next Asheville or Charlotte -—places where overdevelopment has compromised quality of life, affordability and local identity.”

“Obviously, we’ve all watched how much things have changed,” he said in an interview. “We need to have good growth and responsible growth but we need to go about it the right way. For years people have wanted to come to Henderson County. If we just continue to grow in some of the wrong ways I feel like we’ll just become a place where people would rather leave than visit.”

While high-density development “has got its place, I don’t think every corner should turn into a high-density development,” he said.

From his service on the county’s Fire and Rescue Advisory Committee and as a Mills River Fire & Rescue volunteer, Orr has seen how the county’s growth affects first responder agencies.

“I see it every day,” he said. “It requires more personnel, more police, more fire, more sheriff’s deputies. I want to find ways where we can take care of them better, where they’re not having to live down at the foot of the mountain or another state” to make ends meet.

“As a volunteer firefighter myself, I know firsthand the sacrifices these men and women make every day. They deserve leadership that has their back,” he said.

He also wants to support agriculture.

“I would like to have ways to incentivize these farmers to make them want to stay in business and pass the farm down to the next generation,” he said. “I have an agriculture degree from Clemson and that’s a big part of my family. My grandfather was a dairy farmer. I’d love to see it where we can hold on to the farmers we’ve got.”

Steve Wyatt

A native of McDowell County, Wyatt served as Henderson County manager from 2006 until 2021. He has been serving as a consultant since then, coaching and mentoring county managers on finance and other matters.

“I feel like I probably have an obligation to at least offer to put my name in the ring,” he said. :It would be good if other good people would volunteer for that.”

Like Orr and Gonce, Wyatt said he would not have considered running if Lapsley planned to run for re-election.

“We’re really at critical time,” he said. “If Bill leaves, he will take with him a wealth of institutional knowledge and history about so many things in so many areas. I think I could uniquely help fill that and it might be something that the people think is worthwhile and that has value. I think I  have a proven track record — all the way from how to keep Pardee a county-owned hospital and manage it to how to build schools that hadn’t been built in decades.”

During his tenure he put in place structural changes in how county government runs.

 ”The systems that they’re using now for financing and planning far into the future — you know who developed those,” he said in an interview. “I also feel like I owe the people of the community the opportunity to say, ‘Yes we would like for you to help us, be our voice, maybe be our vote,' especially given the loss of what Bill takes with him. I’ve still got a little gas in the tank and a proven track record I’d put up against anyone as far as figuring thing out and getting things done.”  

When Wyatt announced his resignation, in March 2021, a county news release noted that during his decade and a half as county manager, there had been four different county school superintendents, four sheriffs and three Blue Ridge Community College presidents. The 11th Congressional District had had four different congressmen and there had been four North Carolina governors and four presidents.

“The 15 years I have spent working with the commissioners and staff of Henderson County have been the highlight of my 38-year professional career,” he said at the time. “However, ‘for everything, there is a season,’ and an appropriate time, and I believe this to be the time to close this chapter and begin, God willing, the next.”