The most crowded ballot will be in Duck, where nine candidates are running for the five-member town council, including all five incumbents. The lightest action will be in Kitty Hawk, where two candidates, already assured of victory, are in the mix for the two seats in play.

The 2019 municipal election landscape is also notable for incumbents who will not be on the ballot. In Kill Devil Hills, Mayor Sheila Davies has declined to run for re-election, as has Mayor Pro Tem Mike Hogan. In Kitty Hawk, Tina Tice, who was appointed last December to replace newly elected Dare County Commissioner Ervin Bateman, did not file to run again. And in Nags Head, Mayor Pro Tem Susie Walters has chosen not to seek re-election.

In Southern Shores, where politics tend to be passionate and sometimes pugnacious, two of the three town council members who were elected in a 2015 election that swept out three incumbents, have chosen not to run again.

Those retiring incumbents are Mayor Pro Tem Chris Nason and Council Member and former mayoral candidate Gary McDonald. McDonald had initially filed to run for re-election, but his name did not appear on the final list of candidates.  Conversely, Leo Holland, a former council member who declined not to run again in 2017, has thrown his hat in the ring for this fall’s race.

While there’s no mayoral race in Manteo, an interesting one is shaping up in the battle to succeed Davies in Kill Devil Hills. It features Dare County Board of Education Member Ben Sproul, Anne Petera, who ran unsuccessfully for Dare County Commissioner in 2018 and Ron Wright, who lost two previous mayoral races to Davies.

The other mayor whose term is up this fall is Duck incumbent Don Kingston. But unlike Kill Devil Hills and Manteo where the voters choose the mayor, the mayor in Duck is selected by a vote of the other members of the town council.

Here is a full list of the names of candidates running in municipal elections in Dare County this fall.

List of candidates
by town

TOWN OF DUCK
COUNCIL
Donald P. Kingston Nancy Caviness
Rob Mooney
Chuck Burdick
Monica Thibodeau
Sandy Whitman
Ben Vorndran
Jonathan Britt
Marc Murray

TOWN OF KILL DEVIL HILLS MAYOR
Ben Sproul
Anne Petera
Ron Wright

TOWN OF KILL DEVIL HILLS COMMISSIONER
Ivy Ingram
Bernard (BJ) McAvoy
Nelson V. (Skip) Jones, Jr.
T. Dillon Heikens

TOWN OF KITTY HAWK COUNCIL
David Hines
Lynne McClean

TOWN OF MANTEO MAYOR
Bobby Owens

COMMISSIONER
Hannon Fry
Nancy Peele
Darrell Collins
Betty Govan Selby
Jason Borland

TOWN OF NAGS HEAD COMMISSIONER
Kevin Brinkley
Renee Cahoon
Keith Sawyer

TOWN OF SOUTHERN SHORES COUNCIL
Fred Newberry
Elizabeth Morey
Leo Holland
Matthew Neal