My name is Melissa Zehner, and I am running for NC Senate District 1.
I am a mom, a volunteer, and someone who believes that the people who live in a community understand it best. I was raised in a small town, where I learned early what it means to be a part of a community, how much service matters, and why showing up for your neighbors is important. I watched as my mom earned her teaching degree and poured back into the local public schools. I witnessed my dad building a family glass business with his brothers, working tirelessly while also giving back. After (proudly) graduating from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, my years in management and the service industry taught me how to listen, solve problems, and keep moving when challenges come.
Senate District 1 is large and unique - from our coast and farmland to our small towns and city spaces - and every part of it has its own character, needs, and strengths. I care deeply about making sure the people who live here feel heard and represented, now and in our children’s future.
I believe we can build a better South by paying attention to the communities that too often feel overlooked and by valuing the people who keep them going every day.
Bertie
Camden
Currituck
Dare
Gates
Hertford
Northampton
Perquimans
Pasquotank
Tyrell
Bertie Camden Currituck Dare Gates Hertford Northampton Perquimans Pasquotank Tyrell
PUTTING NORTHEASTERN
NORTH CAROLINA FIRST
Invest in our teachers & students
Education should not be an afterthought.
It should be a priority. And if more responsibility for education continues shifting to the states, then you need legislators who will fight for our students and schools.
Public funds should go to public schools.
Public dollars are being moved into a voucher system. In Senate District 1, millions of your tax dollars are following students to private schools that are not held to the same standards as public schools.
North Carolina ranks 43rd in teacher pay.
Most teachers have at least one other job, and the average teacher spends $1100 per year out of pocket for classroom supplies. We need to invest in our teachers by paying them what they deserve and giving them what they need.
make life
affordable again
When groceries cost more, working people feel it first. When healthcare costs rise, working people feel it first. When childcare costs more than a mortgage, it’s working parents who have to figure out the impossible. Working people are affected by everything, because they are the ones holding everything together.
When childcare is affordable, more parents can work, more childcare providers can build careers, and kids show up more prepared for school.
When a community has affordable homes, doctors and nurses can live there. Teachers can stay there. Young people can stay there.
Hard work should still make the American dream possible.
Protect OuR NENC Communities
Working to protect and preserve what makes this region so special means listening to watermen, local business owners, farmers, teachers, and service workers. This campaign is about putting working people first. It’s about widening the circle of who gets a seat at the table in our district. Decisions in Raleigh should be made with real input from here at home.
Because I’m not running to answer to a political machine in Raleigh.
I’m running to answer to you.
advocate for fair voting maps
You should choose your politicians, not the other way around. Poll after poll shows about 84% of NC voters oppose gerrymandering, Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voters all agree on that because fairness isn’t partisan, it’s common sense. And yet in North Carolina, politicians keep drawing maps that choose their voters instead.
Every vote should count the same, no matter where you live or how you vote.