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Name: Paul Norcross
Seat sought: N.C. General Assembly House District 61 (A High Point-based district currently held by Rep. Laura Wiley, who is not running for re-election.)
Part: Republican
Age: 44
Family: Married with two children
Education: BS in Finance from the University of San Fransisco
Occupation: Owner of Global Supply Solutions, a logistics management company.
Community Involvement: Co-founder of the Pheonix Academy charter school in High Point; Incoming board member of the High Point Rotary Club.
Political experience: none
Online: http://votepaulnorcross.com/
Campaign finance: Click here to link to filings.
Worth noting: Norcross has hired former Greensboro City Council member and numbers wizard Bill Burckley to help with his campaign. He also has a longtime Democrat, Chuck Greene, serving as campaign manager.

On education: Norcross said that education is key to recruiting businesses and has personally seen businesses refuse to relocate here based on over-crowded classrooms. Norcross said that her favors differential pay for teachers who perform better or teach subjects like math and science that are in high demand.

“If you’re able to have a performance-based system, then I think you’re maximizing your tax dollar,” Norcross said.

As the founder of a charter school, Norcross believes that the cap on charters ought to be lifted.

“There’s a perception that’s out there, and I don’t know why it keeps up, that charter schools are the enemies of traditional public schools. We’re all public schools,” Norcross said. Charter schools should be viewed as incubators for new concepts.

“I don’t know why it’s a partisan issue, it should not be a partisan issue,” he said. “It should be something that brings both sides together to center.”

Click on the player below to hear more from Norcross on education:

Norcross would like to see High Point invest more in its image as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” The city, he said, should encourage manufacturing of environmentally-friendly products and take advantage of its concentration of showrooms to become a design and conference Mecca for the furniture and textile industries.

He is also interested in working on transportation issues. In particular, he said the state needs to make sure railroads, airports, ports and roads can handle traffic created by supply chain and logistics businesses.

“You’ve got 60 percent of the (Gross Domestic Product) of our country within a day and a half drive,” Norcross said of North Carolina. That should be a big factor in selling businesses large and small on establishing both their logistics hubs here as well as their corporate headquarters.

High Point, he said, needs to do a better job of using its downtown showroom space, which is mainly active during the two big IHFM trade shows each year but not in between.

“You can’t just have it twice a year,” he said. “If you look at the design center in Los Angeles, and you to Chicago with the Merchandise Market, and you go to Florida – they have year round showrooms,” Norcross said. “If we brought this and turned it into a design center and an innovation and technology center, then I think we’d have more people here in full-time showrooms.”

Click below to listen to our conversation about business and transportation:

When asked about incentives: “I’ve never had anybody throw a check at me to start a company and go to work. It doesn’t make sense to me, frankly. From a business standpoint it doesn’t make sense to me.”