Mary Fant Donnan won by a two-to-one margin.

The Winson-Salem Democrat sewed up the nomination for labor commissioner in a runoff primary held today.

With all 100 counties reporting, Donnan has 43,217 votes, or 68 percent. Former labor commissioner John C. Brooks has 20,445, or 32 percent. She now faces incumbent Republican Cherie Berry in November.

Turnout was a paltry 1.9 percent.

In a runoff for the Democratic nomination in state Senate District 5, Don Davis beat Kathy Taft, 63 percent to 37 percent. The seat is currently held by retiring Democratic Sen. John Kerr III.

Davis, the mayor of Snow Hill, had slightly edged Taft, a member of the State Board of Education, in a six-way race in the May primary, but failed to garner a majority. He now faces four-term Rep. Louis Pate, a Wayne County Republican.

And in a runoff for the Republican nomination in state House District 67, Justin Burr defeated Rep. Ken Furr, 58 to 42 percent. Burr had slightly edged Furr in a three-way race on May 6.

Furr was appointed to the seat in August of 2007 after former Rep. David Almond resigned. Burr faces no opposition in November.

Voter turnout today could reach a record low with only one statewide Democratic runoff on the ballot.

Gary Bartlett, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, said he would not be surprised if today's turnout fell below the 2.5 percent recorded in a Republican primary runoff for labor commissioner in 2000, Jane Ruffin reports.

The statewide runoff today pits Mary Fant Donnan, a program officer for the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, against John C. Brooks, a former labor commissioner who was defeated in 1992. The winner will face incumbent Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry in November.

"It seems that probably the largest voting bloc out there today will be the election officials themselves," Bartlett said. "Certainly I would be very disappointed if they did not exercise their franchise."

Bartlett said the heaviest voting appeared to be in McDowell County, which is holding a mixed beverage referendum, and Yancey County, which has a hot school board contest.

The labor commissioner race had the lowest turnout on May 6.

Among the nine statewide races in the Democratic primary, the race between John C. Brooks and Mary Fant Donnan drew the lowest number of voters.

At 1.2 million votes, it was about 76 percent of the turnout of the presidential race. 

In order of turnout, the presidential race was followed by governor, U.S. senator, lieutenant governor, treasurer, superintendent of public instruction, auditor, insurance commissioner and labor commissioner.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Agriculture Commissioner candidate Ronnie Ansley did not have primary opposition. 

John C. Brooks says he would be a progressive labor commissioner.

The candidate for the Democratic nomination and former longtime commissioner says he has three top goals if elected to the office:

1. Boost OSHA staff. Brooks would ask the legislature to double the size of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration program, which inspects workplaces. He says the staff is "miserably small" and would take 130 years to inspect each existing business one time.

2. Start a skills academy. He would start a four-year residential college focused on training workers for high-skilled manufacturing jobs beyond the community college level. He would ask the University of North Carolina system to run it, similar to an existing biotech center run by N.C. State.

3. Work with national labor lawyers. A lawyer, Brooks says he would join the American Bar Association's working group on labor law, which has been a leading voice on workplace reforms in recent years. He notes that neither his Democratic opponent, Mary Fant Donnan, or incumbent Republican Cherie Berry could join since they do not have law degrees.

The labor commissioner runoff will cost between $3.5 and $5 million.

The cost will be shared by each of the 100 counties participating in the runoff between John C. Brooks and Mary Fant Donnan, though some may pay more if other local races drive turnout, said State Board of Elections deputy director Johnnie Mclean.

In previous primary runoffs, turnout has been as low as 3 percent and as high as 16 percent, though Mclean estimates it will be at the lower end.

Under state law, the runner-up may request a runoff if no candidate receives more than 40 percent of the vote. Brooks, who received 24.4 percent of the vote in a four-way race, came in second to Donnan, who received 27.5 percent.

He said he requested a runoff because it is an "educational opportunity."

"The people of North Carolina would have known nothing more about the issues in the Department of Labor than the man in the moon," he said. "The opportunity to save billions of dollars for the people of North Carolina could have gone by, just like it did four years ago."

Brooks also dismissed the idea of instant-runoff voting, in which voters' second-choice picks are counted if no candidate gets a majority. The towns of Cary and Hendersonville held instant-runoff elections last fall under a pilot program.

John C. Brooks received $5,879 by mid-April of 2008.

The candidate for the Democratic nomination for labor commissioner received donations from just nine donors, all of whom he listed on his most recent campaign finance report.

The largest donations came from UNC-Chapel Hill professor Frederick P. Brooks Jr., who gave $2,000, and Kinston farmer Henry Frank Brooks, who gave $1,000. 

At the same time, he spent $4,005 on political consulting and a studio photographer. 

That left him with $1,873 in cash on hand as of the reporting date.

Mary Fant Donnan and John C. Brooks agree on one thing: The incumbent Republican labor commissioner has not done enough.

At a forum in Charlotte Thursday, the two candidates for the Democratic nomination for labor commissioner criticized Cherie Berry's reaction to a Charlotte Observer series that uncovered violations in the state's poultry industry, Melissa Caron reports.

In an interview after the series, Berry said she would not change the way the department is run.

"Our department has the best safety record and fatality record we've had in many, many years," she told the Observer in March.

Donnan said the series, which exposed the handling of workplace injuries, itself made her upset.

"But I think I felt equally sad at the editorial response from our current commissioner," she said.

Both candidates said it was time for a labor commissioner who looks out for worker safety.

"The current commissioner is not an advocate of the working people," Brooks said.

John C. Brooks thinks unions could use a boost in North Carolina.

The candidate for the Democratic nomination for labor commissioner said that he has long supported granting the state's public workers the right to collective bargaining, and he thinks unions could help other workers as well.

"It saddens me that this is such an anti-union state," he said.

Although his opponent, Mary Fant Donnan, has the backing of two of the state's largest unions, Brooks has sounded much more labor-friendly themes in his campaign, saying he would once again be the most progressive labor commissioner in history.

He argued that the lack of strong public unions is hurting workers across the state.

As an example, Brooks noted that state institutions such as UNC-Chapel Hill have outsourced some housekeeping jobs in part because there is no union to oppose the practice. The result is that the new workers do not have access to the state retirement system, have lower wages and poorer benefits.

"These people work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year," he said, "but they get less than the least benefits we pay anybody else on the state payroll."

Harry Payne's name isn't on the ballot, but it might as well be.

The former two-term labor commissioner is at the center of the primary runoff between Mary Fant Donnan and John C. Brooks next Tuesday.

Donnan served as policy analyst and research director at the N.C. Department of Labor under Payne, and he endorsed her earlier this year. Brooks was defeated by Payne in the 1992 Democratic primary in an historic loss for an incumbent Council of State member.

Not surprisingly the two candidates have different views on Payne.

Donnan called him a mentor and said she "can't think of a more compassionate, wonderful person to work with." Brooks said Payne unfairly maligned his leadership in their race, which hinged on the death of 25 workers at a Hamlet chicken plant fire in 1990.

He said Payne's criticisms were "meaningless generalizations" that took advantage of the publicity given to the fire.

For his part, Payne said Donnan is "an exceptional listener" who would find new solutions to problems in the state's workplaces. He refrained from criticizing Brooks, saying only that the former labor commissioner was very gracious after losing the election.

"Oftentimes, when people leave office they don't make it that easy for the one coming in," he said. "He made it exceptionally easy."

Full Disclosure: Payne is married to N&O columnist Ruth Sheehan, who once watched Dome's black Lab on short notice.

Mary Fant Donnan is counting on the Triangle.

The candidate for the Democratic nomination for labor commissioner said that Wake, Durham and Orange counties will be key in her upcoming runoff with former commissioner John C. Brooks.

Because there are no other statewide runoffs next Tuesday, Donnan said that turnout will be pretty low except in areas where a local runoff is also on the ballot.

In Durham County, a countywide school board runoff, and in Orange County, a county commissioner district-wide runoff will draw voters to the poll. And Donnan said past results show Wake County typically does well in runoff turnout because of a general interest in state government.

"There's a fair amount to do in the Triangle because all three counties have something that will bring voters out already," she told Dome.

She said that legislative runoffs in Wayne, Greene and Pitt counties could also draw voters.