NC candidate moved — then filed for office. Now his own party wants him off the ballot.

Two Democratic precinct chairs claim a candidate from their own party running for state Senate doesn’t live in his Charlotte district, but the candidate says he moved there following a separation from his wife — and he has the lease to prove he’s eligible.

The spat over candidate Darrell Bonapart’s address is the latest development in the fight for District 39. The district has changed drastically through redistricting since Dan Bishop, now a congressman, held the seat. District 39 includes Ballantyne, Pineville and Steele Creek and extends to the state line.

In a challenge filed Monday with the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections, precinct chairs Nicholas Clift and Virginia Keogh urged the board to remove Bonapart from the ballot.

Clift and Keogh, both District 39 residents, claim Bonapart is “ineligible and disqualified for election to [the] North Carolina Senate,” according to the challenge.

State law requires that N.C. Senate candidates live in their district for one year ahead of the general election. Bonapart provided the Charlotte Observer a copy of his lease in Steele Creek that began June 30 — which would appear to more than satisfy the one-year residency requirement.

“I’m not trying to look like an opportunist ... I’m not here to be deceitful. I can live wherever I want,” he said in an interview with the Observer Tuesday.

He faces two opponents — Democrat DeAndrea Salvador and Republican Joshua Niday — for the open seat. Voter registration records show Salvador lives on Berewick Commons Parkway, and Niday lives on Greythorne Drive, both in District 39.

Keogh and Clift said they grew suspicious of Bonapart’s address in late December, when he filed to run and also changed his address with the Board of Elections.

Before submitting the challenge, Clift and Keogh said they spoke to a neighbor living close to Bonapart’s new address in Steele Creek and claim the neighbor told them they’d never seen Bonapart at the home. They say they also saw a car they believe is Bonapart’s at his old home in east Charlotte, which Bonapart and his ex-wife still own, according to public tax records.

But Bonapart, a longtime east Charlotte resident and perennial City Council candidate, told the Observer Monday that he moved to Steele Creek in July. He has not lived in east Charlotte for two years, he said.

He signed a residential lease agreement on June 30 with landlord Kimberly Montgomery, according to the contract he provided the Observer. The lease continues on a year-to-year basis.

Bonapart said while he doesn’t anticipate moving back to east Charlotte, he’ll continue to own an “investment property” there, ahead of Major League Soccer establishing the team’s headquarters and practice facilities at the former Eastland Mall site. Two family members still live at his former east Charlotte residence, Bonapart said.

“I know how politics can get at times, and this is one of those moments because I wasn’t making it known where I lived,” Bonapart said. “I’ll provide my lease and go on from there. This is my residence.”

‘A formal investigation’

For the past 17 years, Bonapart had listed a Justins Forest Drive single-family house in east Charlotte as his address, said Michael Dickerson, the Mecklenburg County elections director. That’s in state Senate District 40 and Charlotte City Council District 5.

Bonapart said he lived in NoDa in 2018 and moved to his current address — a townhome on Deshler Court in Steele Creek — in July 2019.

But he didn’t change his address with the Board of Elections until Dec. 20, when he filed his notice of candidacy.

“We don’t like the idea of people moving quickly at the last minute — basically, the last day — to choose a district they think they can run in,” Clift said. “We want a formal investigation of the process.”

Bonapart said he hadn’t planned to run for state Senate until the “opportunity was presented” amid the approval of new legislative maps in September. Bonapart previously lived in the Steele Creek area and graduated from South Mecklenburg High School.

The county’s Board of Elections has five business days from the challenge’s filing to announce a date for the challenge hearing and 20 business days to issue a written decision, which could then be appealed to the state Board of Elections. When a candidate’s residency is challenged, the burden of proof is on the candidate to prove where they live, Dickerson said.

At a hearing, Bonapart would need to show an “actual abandonment” of his east Charlotte home, “coupled with an intent not to return,” according to state statute. Bonapart would also have to provide proof of acquiring an “actual residence” in Steele Creek, as well as his intent to make it his “permanent domicile.”