Politics

McGrady to run for re-election

State Rep. Chuck McGrady announced Tuesday he will run for a fourth term in the N.C. House.

By Bill Moss, Published: November 23, 2015

State Rep. Chuck McGrady plans to seek re-election to a fourth term in the North Carolina House, ending speculation that he might retire after the long 2015 legislative session.

A member of the House leadership team and a key budget drafter, McGrady said he could use his influence to boost major projects for the area including the expansion of parkland.
“It has been a great honor to serve the 117th District in Raleigh,” he said in a news release. “After five years in the legislature, I find myself in a position to positively affect outcomes on issues of critical importance to my constituents. With the economy having improved, we need to increase education funding, and chairing the House’s budget-writing committee gives me the opportunity to make that happen. I also want to see the State complete its acquisition of land for DuPont State Recreational Forest and Headwaters State Forest.”
McGrady’s announcement clarified the intentions of half Hendersonville’s powerful legislative duo. State Sen. Tom Apodaca, the Senate Rules Committee chair, said last week he planned to decide over Thanksgiving about whether to file.
McGrady said Henderson County’s response to the proposed Duke Energy transmission line was part of what inspired him to keep serving.
“If I had any doubts about running for re-election, those doubts were erased by the response of my constituents on the proposed transmission lines running through Henderson County,” he said. “My constituents didn’t simply respond by saying ‘Not in our backyards,’ but they raised significant concerns and challenged some of the assumptions about the need for the project. I’ve never been prouder, and the system worked. Duke Energy got the message.”
A past national president of the Sierra Club, McGrady was the first president of Muddy Sneakers, a nonprofit that takes fifth graders onto public lands to teach math and science, and a founding member of the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy and served as executive director of the Environmental & Conservation Organization, the Hendersonville environmental organization now part of MountainTrue.
As a Henderson County commissioner, McGrady helped guide a comprehensive land-use to passage. In the Legislature, he has been a lead negotiator on environmental regulation bills. Other achievements he cited included his work on the passage of a bill requiring large-plan insurance coverage for autism, work on regulatory reform and leadership in the House on alcohol issues that eased beer sales rules for Southern Appalachian Brewery, helped bring Sierra Nevada to Mills River and helped Henderson County hard cider producers. In those instances and others, McGrady says his priorities in Raleigh usually rise from issues back home. A former summer camp owner, he sponsored legislation facilitating the use of epinephrine auto-injectors, sometimes known as “epi-pens,” in child-serving businesses, and helped summer camps win an exemption from costly building code regulations the industry said were not applicable to summertime lodging for kids.