Screw up Your Hometown. Violate the law. Get elected to higher office. (Rinse. Repeat.)
Sit back and relax while we regale you with the story of Cameron Dockery.
Dockery finds himself a Moore County commissioner-elect thanks to the hard work of county commissioner Tom Adams and state representative Neal Jackson. He prevailed in the March 2026 primary in no small part to the political campaign work of those two.
In Moore County, the commissioners run county-wide, but they only serve a specific district within the county. Dockery, the mayor of Robbins in northern Moore County, barely won his own town and an adjacent precinct. The key to his victory over opponent Curtis Self came in the precincts closest to Southern Pines and Pinehurst — where Jackson and Adams are strongest in the county.
(The last time Cameron Dockery ran for mayor of Robbins a grand total of 47 people voted. Dockery got 39 of those votes.)
Adams and Jackson sold Dockery to their supporters – many of whom were unaware of Dockery and /or the existence of Robbins — as a strong leader and a strong manager with lots of good government oversight experience.
Meanwhile, his then-opponent, Self, has a business degree and works in accounting and journalism.
Well, the Adams-Jackson spin fell apart spectacularly this month with the release of an explosive audit -by state auditor Dave Boliek – of the town of Robbins financial practices while Dockery has been mayor:
Soooooo — it seems a lot of this was known way back in 2025. It would have been nice to know this prior to the March 2026 vote for county commissioner. Next time you see Tom Adams or Neal Jackson — thank them for helping to make Robbins’ problem MOORE COUNTY’S PROBLEM.
Dockery presided over all this stuff Boliek’s team found in Robbins. It doesn’t provide much comfort for me that he will now be in an oversight role for Moore County government. (I’m told Dockery – since the March primary election – has done little to nothing to try and get up-to-speed on county government issues.)
This case is a prime example of why it’s bad to forego your own research and rely on pre-filled sample ballots at election time. Quite often, you don’t get the important information you need to make a wise decision. (You can see the consequences of this in the current makeup of the city councils in Southern Pines and Pinehurst.)
If you find yourself asking someone “Who do I vote for?” thirty seconds before you walk into the voting precinct, you’ve failed as a citizen and are putting your community at risk.
