After all the chips fell on Tuesday evening, N.C. Senate District 33 elected to send a familiar face back to Raleigh.

Republican incumbent Carl Ford was reelected over challenger Tangela Morgan by a substantial margin, more than doubling her vote total. 

Ford received 76,739 votes (71.11 percent) to Morgan’s 31,170 (28.89 percent). 

“I think the people think I am doing a good job, or they would not keep sending me back,” Ford said on Tuesday. “It seems to be going well. We seem to work well with everybody in all the towns. I got 20 towns, two counties, and obviously, three school systems, so sometimes it gets a little dicey but you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Maintaining regular communication with all those bodies can present a challenge. Ford said he relies heavily on electronic communication to make it work. 

“I am hearing from mayors tonight congratulating me, which is good,” Ford said. “You just have to stay in tune with them. We go to a lot of meetings over both counties. Not just Republican meetings, which are paramount, but we have many kinds of meetings. We meet with boards as a whole at times of the year and go to the mayors’ meeting in Rowan. I am trying to keep in touch with everybody.”

Ford indicated that communication is steering some of his legislative agenda in the upcoming term. 

“We’ve got some things we are looking at,” Ford said. “There are some local entities that have sent us letters wanting to run in the same year that we do like all the municipalities do in Stanly County. That is Faith and China Grove and maybe some others will do it. They have been looking for years to get more voter participation. I told them that this is how, but that they need to be ready because (voter turnout) will jump.”

On Tuesday, a referendum that Ford supported pertaining to partisan school board races passed in Rowan County by more than 7,000 votes. 

“What people don’t understand is that’s on the ballot,” Ford said. “We decided to put it on the ballot. Cabarrus (County) just did it. Stanly (County) just did it. We let the people decide. 

Ford said there are benefits to partisan school board races. 

“It should be because the No. 1 question we get every election is, who do we vote for for school board?” Ford said. “Well, it’s hard to point them in the direction especially if you have three Republicans running in one seat. You don’t want to get in the middle of that.”

Ford went on to say that the party stopped endorsing candidates in the past because it had blown up in their faces.

“I think it’s best in the long run,” Ford said, adding, “More and more school boards are going to partisan in North Carolina … I think it’s important. I mean look how partisan education has gotten in the past few years. CRT and every other initial you want to use, it’s gotten really partisan.”

Lastly, Ford said, “I could not do this without God, all these supporters, and my family.”

Rowan Republican Women President ​​Erica Vedeikis was at the Republican headquarters on Tuesday night alongside Ford. She expressed gratitude to the Rowan County Board of Elections for its coordination efforts over the election season. 

“The Rowan County Republican party would like to thank the Rowan County Board of Elections,” Vedeikis said. “They have done a wonderful job in maintaining the early voting and the election day coverage. With all of our polls and precincts, we have 42 precincts across this county. 

“We had five early voting sites and we had great people working at each and every one of those sites each and every one of those days. So we can’t thank them enough for their hard work and dedication to get through this election season.”

Attempts to contact Morgan on Wednesday were unsuccessful.