He served as a Republican member of the North Carolina House of Representatives for a total of approximately 20 years, from 1987 to 1988 and from 1997 through January 2015.

[4] At the time of his resignation, Starnes represented the state's eighty-seventh House district (Caldwell County).

He was elected House Majority Leader by his colleagues in December 2012, for the legislative session beginning in January 2013.

[5] After the 2014 election, in which he was re-elected to the House without opposition, Starnes chose not to seek a second term as Majority Leader because he was already discussing the position with the State Treasurer's office.

[6] In April 2013, Starnes and ten Republican colleagues introduced House Bill 494, a resolution in the Assembly which repudiates any federal court power in ruling on any Constitutional topic in North Carolina, a legally discredited theory known to historians of the antebellum U.S. as nullification.