Cary’s next mayoral election is a year away, but two candidates have already entered the race: Mark Stohlman, the former mayor of Morrisville, and Scott Lassiter, a former Apex Town Council member.
The window to file for the office doesn’t open until July, but county records show Lassiter and Stohlman recently formed committees, which allows them to begin raising money. Stohlman has also created a campaign website.
Cary’s finances and governance will likely be priorities for voters in the 2027 election. Former town manager Sean Stegall spent public funds lavishly while underfunding the public safety departments and dismantling the communications department prior to his resignation in late 2025.
The council commissioned an independent investigation into Stegall’s conduct and cooperated with a separate investigation by State Auditor Dave Boliek’s office, which unearthed some weaknesses in governance and financial controls that Cary is now working to reform. Council members have stressed that the town remains financially strong, but some residents still blame them for failing to rein in Stegall’s spending.
Stohlman told the INDY the town manager scandal motivated him to run. He is a recently retired former accountant who served as an at-large member of the Morrisville Town Council from 2007 to 2009 and 2011 to 2013, and as mayor from 2013 to 2017. He moved from Morrisville to downtown Cary in 2020. He’s a former Republican who changed his registration to unaffiliated sometime after the end of his term as Morrisville mayor.
“I want to restore our citizens’ trust in Cary,” Stohlman wrote in an email. “Instead of just complaining about everything, I decided to use my experience as a [Certified Public Accountant] and background as a former Mayor to bring Cary a dedicated leader with a proven track record.”
Stohlman said the money Stegall spent on documentary-style videos, expensive meals, council member Lori Bush’s graduate school tuition, and “illegal land purchases” should have gone to essential services and staff raises instead. (Bush eventually repaid the town for her tuition. Neither the Town of Cary nor the State Auditor’s Office called Stegall’s land purchases illegal.)
Stohlman has spoken at several Cary Town Council meetings since Stegall’s resignation. At a meeting in July, he brandished a copy of his property tax bill and scolded the council members for Stegall’s unchecked spending, to loud applause from the audience.
“Please do a better job with our tax dollars,” Stohlman said. “I’m retired and on a fixed income and I can’t pay for any more of this nonsense.”
Lassiter is a Republican who, in addition to serving from 2011 to 2015 as an Apex Town Council member, served one term as a Wake County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor from 2020 to 2024. He’s also a former teacher and assistant principal for the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS). According to his Linkedin page, he now works for the state Department of Health and Human Services in the Division of Services for the Blind. He ran unsuccessfully for state senate in 2024, losing to Democrat Lisa Grafstein by about 3 percentage points.
“I’m running for Mayor because I believe Cary’s future deserves the same care and commitment to responsible government that helped make it such an extraordinary place to live,” Lassiter wrote in an email. “Recent deficiencies in oversight and fiscal controls are troubling and must be addressed. That said, I’m far more interested in getting things right going forward than assigning blame for the past.”
Lassiter wrote that his campaign is about “protecting what works, fixing what doesn’t, and ensuring that Cary remains a safe, affordable, and exceptional place to live for generations to come.” He said he wants to invest in infrastructure and core services while minimizing residents’ cost burden. “Not every challenge requires a new program or a larger budget,” he wrote.
Lassiter is suing WCPSS in federal court, alleging that the school district sabotaged his state senate candidacy by suspending him from his assistant principal job in the middle of the campaign.
Lassiter was suspended in September 2024 for an incident in May 2024 when, in the course of breaking up a physical fight between two students, he allegedly pushed one of the students and threw their shoe in their direction. In the lawsuit, Lassiter says his intervention was necessary, no one was injured, and the suspension was strategically timed to maximize the damage to his campaign. According to the complaint, he and another teacher who helped break up the fight were both suspended, but the other teacher was reinstated while Lassiter was pressured to resign, which he eventually did. He is seeking reinstatement to his WCPSS job, back pay, and damages.
In 2023, Lassiter sued then-state House Speaker Tim Moore for allegedly having an affair with his wife, Jamie Lassiter, and causing their marriage to fall apart. Jamie Lassiter and Moore, who now serves in the U.S. House, disputed Lassiter’s timeline. They said the Lassiters had been separated for years when the relationship with Moore began. Lassiter agreed to a voluntary dismissal of the case a couple weeks after his initial filing, and the Lassiters’ divorce was finalized in 2024.
Cary Mayor Harold Weinbrecht, who took office in 2007, did not immediately respond to INDY’s request for comment about whether he will seek reelection for a sixth term. He is a Democrat, as are the other six members of the Cary Town Council.
Unaffiliated voters in Cary outnumber Democrats and Republicans combined, but they tend to vote blue, especially in recent years. The mayoral election is nominally nonpartisan.
During Weinbrecht’s 19 years as mayor, the town has grown in size and national profile and weathered a recession and a pandemic. He is by far the longest-serving member of the council; the majority of his colleagues were elected in the last four years. Since Stegall’s resignation, Weinbrecht has cooperated with outside investigations and stressed his commitment to rebuilding public trust. In the past few months his patience with the onslaught of criticism seems to have shortened, and he’s taken to responding to hate mail and critical news coverage on his blog.
In May 2025, Weinbrecht began signing off his weekly blog posts with a note that “rumors that these next two years on the Cary Council will be my last are simply not true.” He wrote that he “fully” intended to run again. Weinbrecht posted the same note every week through early January.
Other than Weinbrecht, Cary’s longest-serving council members are Lori Bush and Carissa Kohn-Johnson. Bush was first elected in 2011, and her term expires next year. Kohn-Johnson was first elected in 2021, and her term expires in 2029. They both hold at-large seats. When the INDY asked if they were considering a mayoral run, they said their attention is on more immediate matters.
“Gosh, we haven’t even gotten through this upcoming election yet!” Bush said in a text. “There are some amazing people stepping up to serve, and right now I’m focused on supporting them, reminding folks to vote, and getting people to the polls.”
“Right now, I am wholly focused on the council recommendation committee work,” Kohn-Johnson said in a text, referencing a new committee that is updating the town’s policies on council compensation and reimbursement, per a recommendation from Boliek’s office. “Those efforts to address the changes we need to make [require] urgency and focus.”
Council members Sarika Bansal, Michelle Craig, Bella Huang, and Brittany Richards all told the INDY they will not run for mayor next year. Bansal said she’ll seek reelection to her District B seat.
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