Mary Gooch Alphin

Current office and 2026 campaign

Mary G. Alphin is the incumbent Clerk of Superior Court for Lenoir County, North Carolina, and is running for re-election as the Republican candidate in the November 3, 2026 general election ³. The Clerk of Superior Court is a constitutional officer who handles judicial functions—including probate, adoptions, guardianship, and civil hearings—as well as administrative duties such as filing, processing, indexing, and maintaining court records, and serves as the office's comptroller for the funds that flow through the court system ¹.

Career

Alphin has spent more than 17 years working in the Lenoir County Clerk's office, and assumed her current role after the retirement of former Clerk Dawn Stroud, who considered her the most qualified successor ¹. She holds jurisdiction over probate matters (wills and estate administration), adoptions, incompetency cases, guardianship proceedings, and civil matters including land condemnation and property foreclosures ¹. Alphin leads a staff of 20 co-workers, including five assistant clerks, a bookkeeper, and 14 deputy clerks, describing herself as "the leader" of an office she prefers to run collaboratively ¹. On the importance of accuracy in casework, she has said: "Everyone that works in this office knows that the papers and documents they deal with are people's lives" ¹. Her office is preparing for the April 2025 rollout of Justice Enterprise, a new system that will move Clerk's-office operations to a paperless workflow, which she has said will require significant overtime from her staff ¹.

Office history

Alphin previously ran for Clerk of Superior Court in the November 8, 2022 general election as the Republican nominee, facing Democrat Brooketah C. Banks and unaffiliated candidate Rachel C. Turner ².

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