Candidate Biography (submitted by campaign):

Senator Bill Purcell is a native of Laurinburg and attended Laurinburg public schools in Laurinburg. He graduated from Davidson College and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He served as a captain in the United States Army Medical Corp’s in France from 1957 to 1959.

He practiced Pediatrics for 36 years. He served on the Laurinburg City Council for 6 years and as Mayor of Laurinburg for 10 years. Since July of 1997 he has served in the North Carolina Senate now representing the 25th Senatorial District that includes Anson, Richmond, Scotland and Stanly counties.

Presently he serves as Co-Chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee, Co-Chair of the Senate Health Care Committee, and is a member of the Education/Higher Education Committee, Commerce Committee, Finance Committee and several other Committees.

He has received a number of awards and recognitions including the Distinguished Service Award from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the coveted Nathan Davis Award from the American Medical Association as one of two outstanding State Legislators in America for 2007. He is an Elder in the Laurinburg Presbyterian Church, is married and has 4 children and 8 grandchildren.

As one of North Carolina’s fifty senators I consider it an awesome responsibility to deal with the issues facing our state and its nine million people. I take this responsibility very seriously.

First of all, I believe our future economic health starts in our public schools and community colleges. That is why I support better school funding, competitive teacher salaries and innovative approaches to education.

Bringing jobs to my district is a main concern to me. Small businesses are the backbone of our local economies. That’s why I backed tax reductions that help small businesses and voted for tax credits that provide employee health insurance. I also supported incentives for companies that produce new jobs and supported financial assistance to fiscally responsible small businesses.

I’ve devoted much of my time in the senate to improving the health and safety of North Carolina’s families. That is the reasons I supported legislation to reduce the number of children killed in bicycle and ATV accidents, to help make prescription drugs more affordable to senior citizens, to protect people from second-hand smoke, to address childhood obesity, to fund a state-of-the-art cancer research and treatment center, to provide mental health parity insurance and to protect infants and young children in daycare centers and from obtaining serious infections at petting zoos. I will continue to work to find ways to provide health coverage for those 1.3 million North Carolinians who have no health insurance.

You have a right to know that your elected officials are not abusing their power and that they are not using their positions for personal gain. That’s why I supported the State Government Ethics Act. This law establishes clear ethical standards for public officials and bans gifts and contributions from lobbyists to legislators