SALISBURY — Bobby Kemp ran for the Rowan County Board of Commissioners during the last election cycle, and he has announced that he will be running again on a similar platform. However, Kemp is changing a few of his actions and ideas to reflect what he learned during the first go-round.

“I’ll be 72 years old on my next birthday. I grew up here in this county. I’ve watched this town and county grow and I’ve seen what took place. It seems like we’re forgetting the power of the people that built the county,” said Kemp.

Last year, Kemp, a Republican, filed with the Rowan County Board of Elections after the filing period ended, meaning he had to run as a confirmed write-in candidate. Obviously, the main issue was his name not being on the ballot, but Kemp said he ran into multiple other issues, including not being allowed to participate in the Rowan County Chamber of Commerce’s candidate forum.

“This go-round, I have already been over and signed up to open my campaign back up. I’ll be back over in December to do some more paperwork. This time, my name will be on the ballot and we’ll leave it up to all the people in Rowan County. I had numerous people come to me that I know, I just don’t see them every week, and they did not know I was running and said, ‘why didn’t you call and tell me? I would have voted for you, but I didn’t see your name on the ballot,’” said Kemp.

Last time around, the main part of Kemp’s platform was assistance to disabled residents, veterans and the elderly, primarily through tax relief. Late in his campaign and after talking to voters, Kemp said that he also wanted to help young adults in the community with home ownership programs.

“I want to try to help the people. I think it’s time to take a close look at the billfold and it’s time to quit making all this debt and sending taxpayers the bill, because we can’t afford no more,” said Kemp, specifically pointing to the purchase of the former Salisbury Mall, now the Rowan Community Center, as an unnecessary expense.

Kemp’s desire to help those populations stems directly from his own life experiences. The grandson of a sharecropper, Kemp said he grew up poor in a home that only had “two small bedrooms and an outhouse out back.”

“My grandpa was a sharecropper until his health was so bad he couldn’t do it no more. I know what it’s like to struggle to try to make it. I’ve breathed cotton dust and I’ve breathed sawdust. I’ve been a worker for all my life. For 42 years, I’ve worked to make a better life for myself and make a better life for my family,” said Kemp.

Kemp said he dropped out of school in the ninth grade to start work before going back and earning his GED certificate. He served in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division. After the Army, he worked primarily at Cannon Mills until it shut down, at which point he went on to work in various jobs, including as a vice president of sales for a manufactured homes company.

Kemp has lived almost his entire life in Rowan County, with his only year away being spent working in a manufacturing plant in Alexander County.

“I worked in a textile plant, and I got a good taste of that and I came right back. I worked for Broyhill (Furniture), made some fine furniture, but I’d rather have been working for Charlie Cannon,” said Kemp.

That all changed when Kemp was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2012. At first, he worked from home as an estimator, but eventually the cancer and necessary treatments forced him to quit working. Between the medical bills, the loss of income and a six-month delay in his disability check, Kemp said that the increased burden cleared out his retirement savings.

“It just seems like everywhere you turn, there’s somebody wanting more money. I made the statement that, when I first started to become a homeowner, when I paid property taxes I wasn’t charged anything for the fire department. The county took care of the fire department, but now I pay a fire department fee. I pay it on my vehicles, and that’s just money that we don’t have to pay,” said Kemp.

In his first go-round on the ballot, Kemp finished in a distant fifth with approximately 1,250 votes.

Incumbents Mike Caskey and Craig Pierce led the vote-getters with 39,659 and 37,754 votes, respectively. Democrat candidate Alissa Redmond came in third with 23,088 votes and We the People candidate Mark Ortiz came in fourth with 7,331 votes.

He compared that first campaign to his time on the pitcher’s mound as a teenager.

“Every pitch I threw wasn’t a strike. That’s the way life is, everything we do in life is not a strike. Sometimes we’ve got to keep pitching to get better at it, and that’s what I try to do in life, and I want to help people do that,” said Kemp.

Kemp is the second candidate to announce their intentions to run for the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. Karla Foster Leonard, the chairperson of the Rowan County Planning Board and a local real estate agent, announced her candidacy in mid-March.