The North Carolina Secretary of State is an elected official in the U.S. state of North Carolina, heading the Department of the Secretary of State, which oversees many of the economic and business-related operations of the state government. Unlike in many states, the Secretary of State does not oversee state elections.
The position of Secretary of State is, behind only the position of Governor, the oldest government office in the state of North Carolina, dating back to 1665 as the record keeper for the Province of Carolina. The position of North Carolina Secretary of State has, since American independence in 1776, historically had a very low rate of turnover. Only 8 individuals held the office during the first hundred years of statehood; William Hill served as secretary for 46 years continuously, from 1811 until his death in 1857. Remarkably, in the 20th century, Thad A. Eure broke even this record, holding the post for 53 consecutive years, from 1936 to 1989.
From 1776 to 1868, the Secretary of State was elected by the state legislature. Under the North Carolina Constitutions of 1868 and 1971, the Secretary of State is elected every four years by a plurality of the popular vote.
Read more about North Carolina Secretary Of State: List of Secretaries of State
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“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
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—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán (b. 1953)