New Official in Public Eye

ELECTIONS DIRECTOR SCRUTINIZED FOR DRUG CONVICTION

BOLIVIA, N.C. - The need to serve the public is a powerful force in
the life of Greg Bellamy, the newly appointed executive director of
the Brunswick County Board of Elections.

Bellamy was the elected clerk of Brunswick Superior Court in the
mid-1980s when he was ensnared in a drug net cast by then-District
Attorney Mike Easley. Bellamy pleaded guilty to possession of a
controlled substance, resigned his county post and faded from public
view.

Easley, on the other hand, ran successfully for the N.C. Attorney
General's seat at least partly on the reputation he had established as
an anti-drug crusader. In 2000, he was elected governor.

Bellamy served five years' probation, got his right to vote restored
and worked some in real estate, but mostly as a longshoreman at the
Sunny Point Military Terminal near Southport.

Now, as Easley faces the specter of public scrutiny of his past record
should he run for re-election, Bellamy is on the same track.

He's not surprised people are questioning the Board of Elections'
decision to hire him. But he clearly is not pleased with the force it
seems to have taken so far.

"There's no way to tell what the reaction will be," Bellamy said
Monday afternoon.

Elections board member Willie Sloan said Bellamy had all the qualities
he was looking for in a director. Bellamy was not the only applicant
with the right set of qualifications, but he was the one that the
majority of the three-person board felt comfortable with, Sloan said.

He had experience working with the public, he had managed an office
and he had dealt with personnel.

"We felt like he was going to stay," Sloan said. "He wasn't going
anyplace."

He didn't feel the same about the other qualified candidates.

Sloan said Bellamy's past was discussed in deliberations over who to
nominate to the state for the job, but the board decided in the scheme
of things that what someone did nearly two decades earlier shouldn't
be a continual blockade.

"If we look for the good Lord to forgive us," Sloan asked, "how can we
hold it against him?"

The Brunswick County board nominated Bellamy, and that decision was
approved by director of the State Board of Elections.

By law, said Don Wright, general counsel for the state board, the
state's executive director can't refuse a local nominee as long as he
or she meets all the requirements of the law.

Bellamy isn't comfortable talking about the personal rationale that
led to his decision to seek the office when 30-year Executive Director
Linda Britt decided to retire. But he will say that getting older -
he's now 54 - was a factor, especially considering the rigors of
maneuvering heavy loads on and off ships that dock at Sunny Point.

"I enjoy working with the public," he said. "That's something I've
always done."

Bellamy was born in Southport and grew up in Shallotte as a member of
a Brunswick County family that goes back four or five
generations.

He graduated from high school in Shallotte and got a bachelor of arts
degree in business from Methodist College in Fayetteville, N.C. He
minored in political science.

For five years after graduation, he worked for Waccamaw Bank, which
later became part of the United Carolina Bank network. In 1978, he ran
successfully for clerk of court.

His flirtation with cocaine was the big mistake of his life, something
he wishes he'd never done. He was introduced to the drug socially, he
said.

"It certainly wasn't indicative of the way I was raised," he said. "I
would give anything if that didn't happen. But it did."

Bellamy feels he has paid his debt, and he doesn't see why he is any
less qualified to hold his new office because of a mistake 17 years
ago.

He said he learned that Britt was going to retire through a newspaper
story and decided to apply. Now he just wants a chance to do his new
job.

"I made a mistake, and I paid dearly for it," he said. "No one could
be harder on me than me."