The Local Life: Marc Basnight

Long days on the roads of northeastern North Carolina were standard procedure for Marc. Here he is prepping for a full day of meeting constituents with a pre-dawn stop at the Alligator River Store in 1989.Photo courtesy of Drew Wilson.

Former State Senator, North Carolina 1947 - 2020

BY AMELIA BOLDAJI

BELOVED BY MANY, it would be hard to overestimate the impact Marc Basnight had on North Carolina during his 26-year career in state government. So it was perhaps unsurprising when it was announced that the new replacement bridge spanning Oregon Inlet would be named after the former state senator.

“You gather here today to honor me,” Marc wrote in a letter read by his daughters, Vicki and Caroline, at the April 2 dedication in 2019. “But this naming belongs to many. Bridges bring people together and never divide.”

After a long battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Marc passed away surrounded by his loving family members at the age of 73.

Manteo was Marc’s hometown – and he never forgot it.

When Marc was growing up in the late 1940s and throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, the Outer Banks was a vastly different place than it is today. In fact, it was considered such a remote destination that the U.S. military briefly determined that the barrier islands would be the perfect site for testing atomic weapons in 1949. Keenly aware of the challenges his neighbors faced, Marc was named the first chairman of Dare County’s fledgling tourism board when he was only in his 20s, and he later went on to champion key issues such as highway infrastructure and protecting clean water, which deeply affected the Outer Banks’ economic development.

With little more than a high school diploma, Marc rose to become the longest-serving N.C. Senate leader.

Though Marc once told reporters in 2012 that he “never wanted to be a leader,” he did an outstanding job of it during his time in office. After graduating from Manteo High School in 1966, he chaired the Dare County tourism board for two years from 1974 to 1976, and was appointed to the Board of Transportation by then-governor Jim Hunt a year later. He went on to succeed his cousin Melvin Roy Daniels, Jr. as a senator for N.C.’s first district in 1984 – and including his 18 years as president pro tempore, Marc ultimately served a record 13 terms for his district.

Many remember Marc as one of the most accessible figures in N.C.’s political history.

You don’t have to look far to find someone with a personal memory of Marc – and it could be argued that a good part of Marc’s political strength was related to how effectively he communicated with people from all walks of life. During his weekly 190-mile commutes between Manteo and Raleigh, Marc regularly made it a point to stop at gas stations and other shops in order to introduce himself to his constituents and learn more about their daily lives and the issues they were facing. Beyond that, his “downtime” was often spent working at his family’s restaurant, Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café, on the Nags Head causeway – where he enjoyed chatting with guests from both near and far.

Marc’s legacy still lives on.

While the full extent of Marc’s impact on the state over the course of his lifetime can be hard to quantify, one of his most enduring legacies lies in public education. A steadfast proponent of higher education, Marc played a large hand in developing the University of North Carolina (UNC) system – and he was particularly proud of his role in a $3.1 billion higher education bond package that was approved in 2000. When his wife, Sandy, passed away in 2007 from cancer, Marc also created a $50 million University Cancer Research Fund and was instrumental in establishing a new UNC Cancer Hospital and the Biomedical Research Imaging Center in Chapel Hill.