Stan White wants his seat in the state Senate back.

The Dare County resident wants to be the Democratic nominee to challenge Beaufort County resident Bill Cook, the Republican who wrested the Senate District 1 seat from White in the 2012 election, in the 2014 general election next November. The district includes Beaufort, Hyde, Dare, Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Camden and Gates counties.

White announced his candidacy earlier this week, saying many of his supporters in the 2012 election have been encouraging him to run for the seat in the 2014 election.

“After careful thought and considerable deliberation, along with encouragement from my family, I have made a firm decision and commitment to do all that I can to win back the seat we narrowly lost in 2012,” White said.

“The 2014 election for a new senator is now less than a year away and now is the time to begin the discussion about who best can represent and fulfill the needs of the people of District 1,” he said.

White said rural North Carolina and particularly the state’s northeastern counties have been poorly represented and inadequately served by the Republican-led General Assembly.

“I think there’ve been too many issues that affect rural North Carolina, and certainly rural North Carolina takes in northeastern North Carolina, that were not either fought for or addressed in a manner which made the outcome good for rural North Carolina. One of the major things, which I don’t think anybody has seen yet — I’m sure they haven’t seen yet — this new (road) equity formula from DOT that they passed. Rural North Carolina is really going to be suffering. There’s something like 83,000 miles of paved roads in the state, and 61,000 of them are rural roads. The way this new allocation’s going, most of the money is going to urban areas,” White said Thursday. “I really think, based on that new formula, that we’re going to be in bad shape as far as transportation. We all know that transportation is the key to creating jobs, which is something that is certainly needed.”

White is unhappy with how the Republican-led General Assembly is treating traditional education programs and outlets.

“For example, the GOP state budget lays off thousands of teacher assistants while increasing class sizes and freezing teacher pay. Their budget raids millions of dollars from our public schools for a voucher program to fund private schools,” White noted.

White said he started campaigning for the 2014 election about six weeks ago. He expects to be busy in the coming months as his campaign takes him throughout the district.

“I’ve been to Washington three or four times already,” White said.

The 2012 Senate District 1 election, in which lost his Senate seat, was a close one.

It took almost a month after Election Day in 2012 to determine who won the contest for the District 1 seat. After several hand-eye recounts in the eight-county district, Cook was declared the winner after White conceded. On election night in 2012, unofficial vote totals had White with a lead of about 400 votes. After the Nov. 16, 2012, canvasses, the lead switched to Cook. That lead narrowed to 21 votes after the Nov. 25, 2012, recount.