Last week, we released our endorsements for the 2022 primary, including for the local races in Wake, Durham, and Orange Counties. We endorsed incumbent Wake DA Lorrin Freeman’s opponent, Damon Chetson, over Freeman largely based on Freeman’s stance on seeking the death penalty. Reader Mary Willoughby, a Freeman supporter, had some thoughts about our endorsement.

I read through your most interesting endorsement for Wake DA. The compliments to Lorrin Freeman were kind and well founded—based on her long history of public service and accountability to this county. Who is Damon Chetson? A lifelong Republican who previously worked at Goldwater Institute who you currently label progressive? As a progressive myself, I find the label on such a man offensive. Maybe best to call him an “opportunist” in a race that is often overlooked by the general public.

Freeman, as you likely know, spent many years as the Clerk of Courts, running literally hundreds of thousands of cases through the system smoothly. Truly a thankless job—no one sees the work behind the scenes and it takes a lot of it! When she became District Attorney, Freeman also created a roundtable group in Wake County of all the major players in mental healthcare locally (hospitals, non-profits, counselors, public services) to discuss best ways to provide services to those suffering from mental health illnesses but stuck cycling through medical institutions and jail. What a visionary. Wake County also has more deferral programs than any other district in the state.

When I think progressive, I don’t consider simply the words that someone says but am more interested in the actions they have the capabilities of taking. With Damon Chetson’s unusual history and lack of experience managing a large office (the DA’s office for the largest county in the state!), I would view his talk as just that—talk. Was he advocating at the legislature for legalization of marijuana? Or did he advocate to end the death penalty via NCGA as well? Has he worked to deliver needed care to the mentally ill citizens of our county, about whom he purports to be so concerned? If he has performed even one of these actions, I sure haven’t heard about it.

Reader Katie O’Neal Patterson had some thoughts, too:

As a progressive publication, how can you in good conscience endorse Damon Chetson? As a progressive and a female, a man who openly referred to himself as “Raleigh’s sex crime lawyer” and used his website to help sex offenders is the furthest person I want sitting in the district attorney’s seat. I fail to see what in Damon Chetson’s past experience warrants any kind of endorsement from your publication. If he has done anything for the progessive cause, why not mention it in your endorsement? Is the entire argument for Damon that he is NOT Lorrin? Because that is pretty much how it reads.

Lorrin was the first female district attorney here in Wake County and arguably one of the most powerful DAs in the state. Where is the recognition she deserves for blazing that trail for women? She fights for women (like the two women who were tortured and murdered on video in that double homicide your article referenced but conveniently left the details out of) and instead you endorse yet another white male. Not just any white male—a former vice president at the Goldwater Institute whose only progressive experience is that he canvassed for Bernie Sanders? Is he at the legislature working to legalize marijuana? Doing anything to work on encouraging the legislature to get rid of the death penalty? Is he doing anything to promote the progressive causes you are holding against Lorrin?

You’re against capital punishment and I respect that opinion. But to endorse Damon, given his history and lack of experience, solely on the fact that he is against capital punishment is wrong and irresponsible. At best you should have declined to endorse either. This man does not deserve this job and if you were unable to write an endorsement of him that includes any positive thing he’s done for the progressive cause, you know it as well as I do.

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