R.C. Soles Jr., longtime NC legislator who quietly dodged scandal, dies at age 86
R.C. Soles Jr., who represented his native Columbus County in the General Assembly for 42 years and became one of the state’s top Democratic lawmakers before retiring after shooting a former legal client in the leg, has died at age 86.
His death at a hospital in Loris, South Carolina, south of Tabor City, on Friday was announced by the Inman Ward Funeral Home and first reported by The News Reporter in Whiteville, the county seat where Soles practiced law for decades.
Robert Charles Soles was the longest serving member of the General Assembly when he left office in early 2011. He was elected to the House in 1968, and served there until 1976 when he won a Senate seat he would be reelected to 15 more times.
Soles was a Democrat in a conservative district and never served a term when his party did not control the chamber. The year he left office is when Republicans became the majority of both the North Carolina House and Senate.
Soles was known for being quietly influential but mostly in service to his local constituents and friends. He is credited with getting money for new high schools and senior and youth centers in his district; he got $1 million to establish a state forestry museum in a shuttered bank building in Whiteville, only to see the museum closed after he left office. (It has since been converted into a branch of the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.)
Soles once made a bid to become leader of the Senate, but lost to Marc Basnight of Manteo, who went on lead the chamber for a record 18 years and had the bridge over Oregon Inlet named for him. Basnight, who died in December, and Soles were friends and allies, and the Senate leader helped Soles win one of his biggest prizes, the 1,700-inmate Tabor Correctional Institution that opened in 2008.
Soles was accused of misusing his influence at times. In 1983, following a wide-ranging federal corruption investigation that led to several convictions, Soles faced four indictments. A judge threw out three of them, and a jury found Soles not guilty of the fourth — helping a political associate receive bribes.
In 1998, The Star-News in Wilmington reported on his efforts to slip a few lines into a law to help a longtime legal client, a bar owner, remain open despite repeated violations of state alcohol laws. In 2010, Soles introduced a bill adjusting state pension eligibility that critics said was designed to benefit one person, outgoing district attorney for the region, Rex Gore, a longtime political ally.
Shooting leads to felony assault charge
But no accusation or scandal threatened his career until the shooting at his home in August 2009, when Soles shot 22-year-old Thomas Kyle Blackburn in the leg with a handgun during a confrontation. Soles, then 74, said he fired in self defense after Blackburn and another man tried to break into his house. But the case went to a grand jury, which found probable cause to indict him on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, a felony.
Because of Soles’ close ties with Gore, the case was handled by the office of then state Attorney General Roy Cooper. Soles announced he would not seek reelection a week before Cooper’s office went back to the grand jury to seek the felony indictment.
A month later, Soles pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, paid a $1,000 fine and finished out his final term in the Senate. He apologized after the plea hearing.
“I thought I was in the right,” he told the Associated Press. “Sometimes you make bad judgments.”
The shooting drew attention to Soles’ relationships with young men who had been his clients in criminal court over the years. Soles had helped many of them with cash and, in one case, money to build a house.
But his defense attorney in the shooting case, Joe Cheshire, said the men had “in essence, been terrorizing him for years.” In the four years before the shooting, Tabor City police had been called to his home and law office dozens of times for reports of attempted burglaries, assaults and neighbors hearing gunshots and loud arguments.
Soles, who never married, continued to practice law in Columbus County until as late as last year, according to The News Record. Durham Rep. Mickey Michaux became the longest-serving member of the General Assembly in 2018, the year he retired, eclipsing Soles by one year.
Democrats continued to represent Columbus County in the Senate until Republican Danny Earl Britt Jr. won in 2016. Britt has easily won reelection twice since.
Soles remained in power so long in part by keeping in step with his constituents, even when it meant going against his own instincts. In 2008, he told The News & Observer that he wished that he had voted in 1977 to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed by two votes in the Senate.
“I personally was for it,” Soles said. “I voted against it simply because I could not survive down in this district at that time. If you’re going to be a good representative or senator, you’ve got to lead and you’ve got to go along with the majority of the crowd, too. If you’re going to be their voice, you better be their voice.”
Funeral services for Soles will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 8 at Tabor City Baptist Church. He will be buried afterward in Myrtle Green Cemetery in Tabor City.
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 4:11 PM with the headline "R.C. Soles Jr., longtime NC legislator who quietly dodged scandal, dies at age 86."
