By Gordon Anderson | gordon@rantnc.com
An unaffiliated voter in the Deep River area has qualified as a write in candidate for the Lee County Board of Commissioners seat held by Republican Commissioner Kirk Smith, according to the Lee County Board of Elections.
Jonathan Boyce lives on Lee’s Chapel Road in the Deep River area. He was able to gather enough signatures from eligible voters to earn a write in line in the District 2 race this fall for the Lee County Board of Commissioners. Boyce’s name won’t be on the ballot, but only write in votes for his name will count in the 2026 election.
Boyce has spoken at at least one meeting of the Lee County Board of Commissioners in recent weeks, appearing during a public comment period to advocate against a proposed data center near his home. A media sheet provided by the Lee County Board of Elections lists his occupation as life coach and indicates he’s an unaffiliated voter.
Reached for comment, Boyce said he “felt led to run” because of the data center issue.
“There are so many people in the community who feel like they were deceived by the data center rezoning,” he said. “I don’t like the way it was handled, and the residents of Lee County don’t either. This is nothing I ever planned to do, but I think leaders need to show honesty and transparency.”
Boyce said he’s originally from Pennsylvania but has been in North Carolina since 2011. He moved to Lee County from the Durham area in 2021 because he has family in the area. He said he doesn’t intend to be a one issue candidate and will spend the next four months working to hear from voters about how best he can serve them if he’s elected.
“I just learned yesterday I was qualified as a write in candidate,” he said. “Obviously there are a lot of other issues besides the data center, and I’ve got a lot to learn. I’m looking forward to talking with voters and learning about what they think.”
Prior to Boyce’s entry to the race, Smith had no opposition in the 2026 election. District 2 covers eastern and northern Lee County, stretching from the Cumnock and Northview areas to Deep River, Broadway and the northern half of Carolina Trace.
The Rant will provide more coverage of the 2026 campaign as it develops.
This is exactly what we need in this county. We are coming after you Kirk Smith and getting rid of you and your corrupted Jimmy Randolph partnership!! People in district 2 are tired of having someone not listen to them and representing corporation growth and ruining people’s lives with your pop up growth!! Vote Nov. Boyce for commissioner 2026 !!
Can you give some examples of these “ruined” lives?
Me….
Ruining life means living,working, building a place you live for 43 years then retire there planning to die in peace and quiet. Then Kirk Smith, Jimmy Randolph and Lee County Commissioners take it away!!!
While I’m sure Mr. Boyce would be less of an embarrassment to the county and the data center makes a great cause celebre, Boyce’s house is just a little over a mile as the crow flies from one of the Brick Plants in Brickhaven and the CP&L Coal Ash Pits and Gas Burner. His house is just two miles as the crow flies from the Airport, the Fiberboard Glue Plant and the location of the new Data Center. Now if you stand in the middle of the intersection of Lee’s Chapel and Lower River Road you don’t see any of these industrial sites. At the NC 42 end of Lower River Road is the City’s Water Plant, and the Old US end is construction mobilization yard, railroad siding, and just a bit up the road is Wake Stone. The combination of Old US 1, the two rail roads, and electric lines from Sherron Harris and the old Coal Fired Plant means that US 1 is an industrial corridor, just like US 421 is from the Vet Hospital all the way to Siler City. Railroads, mines, water treatment, sewage treatment, chicken slaughter, brick manufacture, wood yards, pharmaceuticals, airports, engines, textiles, electricity, natural gas, and garbage/waste dumps are industrial operations. 20-40 year old pine trees planted to be cut for pulp don’t change the underlying nature of the area.
Below you asked for a reply. There is no reply selection to be made. So I will wait, as I have done before.
Hey you EX PAT !! Do you want a data center in your back yard ? Do you think Kirk Smith, Jimmy Randolph and the Lee County Commissioners want one in there’s? We are not industrialized on Lower Moncure Rd. You need to drive all the way down the road and open your eyes!!
I’ve been driving or riding up and down Lower Moncure Road for 60 years. I know what it looked like back in the day and what it looks like now. Just because a landowner has slapped in some pine trees to prevent you from seeing the Coal Fired Plant or the wind blows in such a way as not to smell the pulp wood glue plant doesn’t change the fact that railroads and cross country power lines are industrial objects.
Vote Boyce in Kirk Smith out !!!
Good for you Jonathan! I would WELCOME you on the LCBofC as an alternative choice for residenta.
Feeling angry about how the zoning happened is not an excuse to oppose a data center. The world will not stop turning over your feelings. Data centers are a necessity if this area is going to keep up with the rest of the technological advances taking place all over the nation. Keep up Sanford.
Trish, sounds like a good argument, butt if the needs are more in line with doing less with less that cost less, why the rush to be the first to the end of the line?
How has your life been ruined?
You want one in your back yard?
Question to all you in favor of data center.!! DO YOU WANT ONE IN YOUR BACK YARD??? If so contact Jimmy Randolph with SAGA.
No I don’t want one in my backyard, but I also didn’t want an Airport, Nuclear Plant, Hard Rock Mine, Brickpit, Coal Ash Dump, or Wood Glue factory in my “backyard”. That’s why I never considered living in the area despite my personal like of Lower River Road and especially Ammons Farm. By my count there are 9 houses within 750-1200 feet of the site. The Godfrey’s patch of houses, and three to the north edge of the site owned by McCarty, Flynt, and Kidd. Put another way, no home is closer than a quarter mile. Using the county’s topo maps and the USGS maps, all these house are at the near 250′ elevation. That means their roofline is under 275 feet in elevation. The outer wall of the building should be about 30 feet high on top of a 250′ elevation. On top of the roof should be an 8′ foot or more parapet (false wall). That means there should be at least 15′ of elevational buffer between sound off the roof and your roofs. By and large, sound does not pour over a stadium like construct – instead it continues on it’s upward slope. You should not be seeing it, or hearing it, or feeling it from your back or front yard. If that is the case that’s a failure of the City and County planners to tweak the building and site plan. Personally I think they do a good job. I have known many of them more than 50 years and I trust them to protect you. If in fact they don’t, then sue the Hell out of the City and County and make them buy you out. If you put a pushpin in a map of central NC and attach a string that represents 30 miles as the crow flies and put the pin in at the south end of the RDU runway and then run a circle around the area, the area within the circle is not going to be or remain rural. The City, Lee County, Randolph, their prior incarnations, Wake County, Chatham County, and the State of NC did not do this. This was done by industrial developers out of Greensboro working with NC State, UNC-Ch, and Duke back in the 1950’s – the RTP.
I encourage folks to look are maps instead of using their dead reckoning while driving around in a car as their way of knowing the area. The maps show what where as the crow flies and where the creeks go instead of following some twisting former farm road. Everything on the west side of Lower Moncure and Post Office Roads is going to develop like the Triangle. That means Roberts, Gum Fork, Hughes, and Wombles Creek. South and east of that line can remain farm land or rural land. In encourage you to land speculate with all the others who will flock to the area. The NC General Assembly does not give the County the power to stop development – they give that to NO County. If Durham City, Chapel Hill, Chatham County, Boone, Asheville, etc., can’t do it, you know Lee County can’t do it. Do the smart thing, harass the County and BOE to compensate you with a middle school expansion on or near Deep River School. Harass the County to build some sort of enhanced emergency services capacity near the Intersection of Old US, US 1, and Lower Moncure Road. Get ahead of the development curve. People who lived in the area were told about the future back when the Airport moved out there. It’s been 30 years of notice.
Ex Pat or Kirk Smith, nobody told anyone nothing about industrialization of this area. I didn’t get the letter see it on the news or read it in the paper. You have snuck in and under false pretenses and rezoned a large piece of land that the majority of people in your own district where against ! You don’t deserve to hold office. People came out to speak against this time after time and you ignored them! I can hear over a mile threw thick woods a house being built. Don’t put your faith in a AI generated GPS map. Your math is completely wrong. I have road horses, four wheelers, hunted all this land your talking about when it was all game land! You are so out of touch with your hole area you represent. Let’s put a data center on Avents Ferry road !!
In all my years never have I been accused of being Kirk Smith or anyone like him. You are the one who seems not to know where he lives and who owns what. Minnesota Manufacturing and Mining owns 100 acres and 2000 feet of frontage on Lower Moncure right at Old US and then Hunt Transport owns another 1500 feet of frontage for their operations. That’s hard rock mining and trucking storage. Next is the railroad. Then there is a mobile home dumpsite at the corner of Lower Moncure and Lower River Rd. The Airport then owns over 6,000 linear feet of frontage on the west side of the road. You have Mitchel Paving on the other side of the road. Then the City of Sanford has 300 feet for a sewer lift station. That’s a total of over 3 miles of heavy and light industrial uses and ownership from Old US 1 down to the plant site. The County’s land use plan shows the future of that segment as Light Industrial. That plan was adopted a decade ago. I understand that you are upset, but to say you had no idea that the area was going that way means missing 40 years of information.
Ex pat or Kirk Smith, have you looked at your GPS map since we can’t go by riding in our car or walking in the woods anymore. You and Jimmy Randolph look at all the empty lots and buildings in the already existing industrial park. Go in the back way off colon road. I think that is zoned heavy industrial maybe ? Maybe you have forgot or overlooked all the empty large land areas designed for industrial use !!
This will help you. https://leecountync.gov/departments/gis_strategic_services_/
Global Positioning is GPS, GIS is Geographic Information System.
If land is zoned for industrial, it’s zoned for industrial whether it has a factory on it or just pine trees. If land is owned by a City, County, or Private entity and it already has an airport, railroad line, electric line, water line, rock quarry, dump, pulp yard, or any other commercial/industrial operation it doesn’t have to be zoned for what it’s been functioning as – the owner has a right to continue that function.
When you go out to the Nuclear Plant, you don’t see it at first it’s way behind the trees, that’s the general idea with all heavy industry or light industry that only offers a metal box not some fancy exterior.
I am well aware of the brick pits in Colon. I would not touch one with a 100 foot pole let alone a 10 foot pole. Those are “brown sites”, meaning they are old industrial sites from the time when industry dump every chemical imaginable on the ground. The brick pits need to be filled in or turned into golf courses and yes they might make a great spot for a data center – way down in the hole, but you will need to keep the water pumps pumping the water out of said holes.
I have been living here 43 years and been in all these woods, old logging roads remember when Lower Moncure Rd. was dirt road. Since I was a child with my grandfather. I know this area better than any GPS map will ever show you or geographic map. I am aware of the rock quarry the old wood yard just reopened in the past few years. I know the Mitchell’s paving family personally. I know my area and the people who live in it!! DO YOU?? The residents here basically don’t want a data center bottom line!! Why is somebody like you shoving it down our throats!! Me and others live here to be left alone and I suggest you do that!! Go get on your computer and play on your GPS map and I will go outside enjoy nature watch it all and enjoy it before it’s gone !!
Cloud I assure I know many of the residents up and down Lower Moncure, some too well. 🙂 Me explaining the facts to you is not shoving it down your throats. Now the Airport, that was shoved down your throats.
The die was cast on your area when the Airport decision was made in 1992.
There’s a man living at the north end of the runway who can tell you all about if he is still alive.
Your personal relationship with someone conducting business or industry is irrelevant. What is relevant is how the land is zoned and or how it is used. If you want to live in the woods, in the boondocks without any suburban or urban incursion, don’t own land between Sanford, Pittsboro, Hillsboro, Butner, Louisburg, Smithfield, Dunn, Lillington, Fayetteville, Aberdeen and Carthage and the Triangle. ALMOST EVERYTHING between that ring and the Triangle will suburbanize or urbanize over the next 30 years, baring Nuclear War or some Pandemic that kills people by the hundreds of thousands. You can’t stop it. You can make some money off it and move toward the NC Zoo and the Uwharries – that should escape the future growth.