HUDSON—“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet….”
With apologies to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Caldwell County has not one, but two, Dennis Benfields. One is running for a countywide political office; the other is not.
The personal hygiene of either may not rival the sweet smell of a rose, but politically, they both seem to be on the same page, singing from the same hymnal.
“We’ve known each other, or at least known about each other, for decades,” laughed Dennis A. Benfield of Hudson, 57, who’s a first-time candidate in an eight-person field in the May 2 Republican primary for the Caldwell board of commissioners.
A 31-year resident of Caldwell County, the candidate said he and his counterpart only recently talked long enough to discover that they are, “probably, third or fourth cousins.”
No one, they say, seems to want to believe there are two Dennis Benfields around—or that they live less than five miles apart.
“He’s the older one; I’m the more handsome one,” added Dennis A. Benfield, only half joking, about Dennis M. Benfield, 59, of Granite Falls.
“I expected to have some ‘name recognition problems,’ as all first-time candidates do,” said Dennis A. Benfield, “but none of my opponents faces this. My career has always been around Hickory, so there are probably more people in Caldwell County who know him than know me.”
To assist with his name recognition in the campaign, the candidate has established a web site, “www.dennisabenfield.com.”
The elder Benfield is a senior master mechanic of some 14 years at Armstrong Ford in Hickory. He’s also a reserve deputy for the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Department.
He’s spent his entire life in Caldwell County, first picking up a wrench in his dad’s Granite Falls mechanic shop at age 15. He’s been in law enforcement, too, for more than 31 years, including 15½ years full-time.
Dennis A. Benfield, the candidate, who grew up in Hickory, is semi-retired. He’s a part-time instructor at Catawba Valley Community College and an associate agent for a Nationwide Insurance agency in Hickory.
Ironically, the pair even worked together at the same employer for more than two years.
At Armstrong Ford, Dennis A. was in sales as assistant fleet manager, while Dennis M. was a senior shop mechanic.
“Frankly, we had some fun with that,” smiled the candidate. “People would call the dealership looking for him, and I might get the call by mistake. The caller would ask me some detail about rebuilding a transmission, and I wouldn’t have a clue.”
Dennis A. Benfield left the dealership in the fall of 2000, looking to “slow down a bit” and find a way to earn his income without so much wear-and-tear on arthritic knees.
“Dennis is a pretty smart guy,” said Dennis M. Benfield, “and he did well at the car dealership, because he was straight-up with people and he talked about facts. Too many politicians don’t do that.”
“Seriously,” added Dennis A. Benfield, “as we got to know each other, we found that we shared the same opinions about how things ought to be—and as I talked to people about Caldwell County’s problems, Dennis helped me to realize that we both were hearing people say the same kinds of things.”
The elder Benfield is actively supporting his namesake’s campaign for a seat on the Caldwell County commission.
“The people on that board are going to have to get more jobs into this county to help relieve the tax burden on people. We’re a poor county, and the politicians don’t seem to realize it,” offered Dennis M. Benfield.
“We’ve had a lot of industry, mostly furniture, move out of our county to foreign countries, and at the same time, our people are having to buy Chinese-made stuff at Wal-Mart.
“For a decent job, our people have to drive to neighboring counties—that, or lose their home, ‘cause they don’t have the education to get a better job here. That’s the legacy of the furniture industry in Caldwell County.”
Not surprisingly, Dennis A. Benfield thinks at least part of the answer is to do a better job selling the county’s attributes.
He pointed out that “other North Carolina counties are attracting new, non-polluting industries to provide economic growth and stabilize the tax base. Why can’t we?”
“We need to sell Caldwell County for what it is—a beautiful place for people to live and raise families, with lots of clean air, clean water, available land and a dedicated work force that now must drive 30-40 miles for the best jobs.”
“We can’t expect the individual property owner to continue to take on more and more of the tax burden, while millions of dollars in the industrial tax base evaporates with all these plant closings,” Dennis A. Benfield said.
“We’ve got about 22,000 tax-paying families supporting some 78,000 people. But, our two incumbent commissioners are running for reelection, patting themselves on the back because our tax rate, they say, is so low.
“I hate to be the one to wake them up to the fact that the people here don’t give a happy hoot about what the tax rate is, or what rate people are paying in Wake County.
“Our people don’t live in those 70-some other counties; our people live here. What our people care about is, from 2004 to 2005, their taxes went up big-time in dollars—some by 30 percent or more—and those dollars are harder than ever to find!
“Maybe, if we cut back on the scope of what government tries to do—just maybe, we could lessen the need to tax, tax, tax.”
“In my household,” the candidate said, “we clip coupons and look for discounts before we buy, we work hard to eliminate waste, and we take advantage of competition, to control our costs and save dollars. That’s the attitude I would take to the Board of Commissioners.”
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