Hero dad, Marine Corps vet sets his sights on a seat on the Moore County school board

Many husbands and fathers out there talk of being ready to risk their lives to defend their families.  Carthage area resident Jim Pedersen actually had to do it during a 2014 trip to New Jersey. Pedersen and his family were there to visit his mother who was recovering from a medical procedure.

Unfortunately, during the trip, the Pedersens were victims of an attempted car-jacking.    Pedersen used his own handgun – properly purchased and licensed in North Carolina – to foil the attempted crime. The culprits escaped, but Pedersen ran afoul of New Jersey’s strict gun control laws.  He got charged for possessing the handguns and bullets — much more of a punishment than the attempted attackers got. 

Fortunately, in 2017, Pedersen’s case caught the eye of New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie.  Pedersen was one of a number of out-of-state visitors to New Jersey who had an unfortunate encounter with New Jersey gun laws.  Christie pardoned Pedersen and a number of other folks who had suffered similar misfortune over the state’s gun laws.

In an interview following the pardon, Pedersen offered up some advice to prospective car thieves / car-jackers out there:

“If you want to commit a violent crime, pick someone who doesn’t have North Carolina plates and a Marine Corps sticker on their car.”

While in Moore County, Pedersen has worked as an advocate on veterans’ issues and with various veteran-related charities.

As a parent, he’s also been intensely interested in the public schools.  Thanks to his experience in New Jersey, Pedersen has a signficant interest in security.  He was alarmed at the inability of the in-house police force to sufficiently staff all of the county’s school facilities.  As a concerned parent and community member, Pedersen teamed with school board members to transition the system away from a private police force and toward the county sheriff’s office. That goal recently became a reality.

Pedersen is on the November ballot in Moore County for one of the three open seats on the county school board.  The schools races are officially non-partisan, but Pedersen was recently tapped as one of the two GOP-endorsed candidates for the two at-large seats on the board. 

What follows is a sampling of some of his issue positions: