Cary’s town council elections, for which early voting begins next week, are officially nonpartisan. Still, the three races divide neatly along party lines, each featuring one Democrat and one Republican, all endorsed by their respective county parties.
But party affiliation alone is unlikely to guarantee a win for any candidate in politically diverse Cary, where about half of all registered voters are unaffiliated, municipal elections typically draw low turnout, and local issues don’t fall neatly into partisan boxes.
Nowhere is that more true than in northern Cary’s District A, where first-time candidate Brittany Richards is challenging 26-year incumbent Jennifer Robinson. Both Richards and Robinson want to invest in Cary’s core town services, maintain its green spaces, and add density in the more urbanized parts of town to support the demand for more affordable housing. On their respective campaign websites, both note that Cary’s population and tax base growth have slowed, which means budgeting is becoming more challenging and the council will need to make trade-offs.
What really separates Robinson and Richards is their experience and party affiliation.
In an interview, Robinson, a registered Republican, said her long tenure on council prepares her to “shepherd the town through” this transition period of slowed growth. In addition to representing District A since 1999, Robinson has also chaired the Central Pines Regional Council, the North Carolina League of Municipalities, and GoTriangle and continues to serve on all three boards.
“Our revenues to expenditures will be a very tight and problematic relationship [going forward],” Robinson says. “When you’re in that kind of situation, you have to go back to fundamentals, and you have to prioritize what is most important to citizens.”
For her, that means public safety, infrastructure, and town services.
Richards doesn’t have Robinson’s experience, although she does have a background in public policy, nonprofits, and political organizing, and she’s served on the town’s environmental advisory board.
But, she says, residents she’s canvassed are looking for “a fresh perspective” and she thinks she’s more representative of District A voters’ values.
“Just to be perfectly frank, the major distinction between me and my opponent is our party affiliation,” Richards says. “I have no appetite to bring national-level political rancor to this local race …. I try to make just a factual distinction, which is, I am running as an endorsed Democrat, my opponent is running as a Republican, and we live in times right now, for better or worse, that tells voters, without me having to fill in a lot of blanks for them, that she and I have different perspectives.”
Robinson tells the INDY that the Cary Town Council has always been nonpartisan and collaborative, and she wants to keep it that way.
“We are nonpartisan, and we should try to hold that as a core value going forward,” she says. “I do think it’s really healthy to have that breadth of perspectives.”
At the council table, Robinson’s rhetoric is usually balanced and moderate. But in a series of emails from 2023 that were recently resurfaced on Instagram by the user saynotoextremists, Robinson made disparaging comments about members of the LGBTQ community in relation to a Pride float at the Christmas parade, calling it “offensive” and “appalling,” and lamented the “liberal machine that so powerfully unseated” long-serving Republican former town council member Don Frantz.
“If we are going to maintain our community values, we cannot sit silently on the sidelines as a liberal force changes our Town,” Robinson wrote in one email.
Robinson confirmed to INDY that she wrote the emails and says she was speaking up on behalf of Catholic residents who may have been offended by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence drag group’s inclusion in the parade.
“We want to be inclusive in Cary, and we have to be careful when we address inclusivity that we are not excluding other people at the same time,” she says. “In our zest to be inclusive, we cannot also exclude people.”
Meanwhile in District C, the town’s southernmost district, Republican Renee Miller is running against Democrat Bella Huang.
One of them will replace Jack Smith, an immigrant from Germany who’s stepping down after 36 years on the town council. District C is Cary’s oldest and most conservative district, shifting the advantage to Miller, a member of the town greenway committee and a former president of the Western Wake Republican Club who lost to Smith by a slim margin in 2023 and is running as a fiscal conservative.
Yet Huang, a small business owner and cofounder of the Margin of Victory Empowerment (MOVE) Foundation and political action committee, has a staggering fundraising lead over Miller. As of the September 30 campaign finance reporting deadline, Huang had raised about $96,000 this election—the most of any Cary candidate—compared to Miller’s $14,000. Huang seems to have tapped into the donor base of the MOVE PAC, which works to civically engage and elect Asian Americans in North Carolina.
Huang’s platform mentions prioritizing sustainability, improving infrastructure, expanding town services for youth and seniors, and addressing the rising cost of living in Cary. In an interview, she adds that she’s excited about representing Cary’s large and growing Asian community as a Chinese American immigrant herself. She downplays her party affiliation and says her support transcends party lines and labels.
“I’ve learned a lot of people … support you no matter what because I’m a Democrat, and some people just support me because I’m a good listener,” Huang says. “Some people support me even if they’re a little bit grumpy. I hear a lot of complaints about what is going on in Cary now, but I’m still listening. I’m trying to help.”
As in District A, the District C candidates’ platforms overlap. They both want to expand Cary’s senior programming and services. They seem to largely agree on environmental conservation, too. In interviews, they distinguished themselves with rhetorical differences—”citizen” versus “resident” or “community member”— and in their positions on thornier local issues like housing.
“We have a need for more housing here, and we also have a need to protect our current residents who’ve been paying taxes for years and years and years,” Miller says.
She’s “interested to see” how recent efforts to add more affordable housing work out, nodding to the town’s partnerships with Greenwood Forest Baptist Church and Laurel Street, the developer of a 126-unit mixed-income development on Southeast Maynard Road.
“I think it’s an interesting idea,” Miller says of the Laurel Street development. “I do have some concerns about having people who live two different ways in the same community.”
Huang says “affordable housing is the most urgent [need]” in Cary, adding that public school teachers, restaurant workers, and single parents ought to be able to afford to live where they work. She supports reintroducing an affordable housing bond referendum and forging new nonprofit partnerships to build more housing.
“The land in Cary is so limited and so expensive,” she says. “If you want to build cheaper housing, it has to be [on] cheaper land. So I think we need to continue to work with other nonprofits.”
Smith, the outgoing District C council member, hasn’t made an endorsement in the race. He switched his affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated before the 2022 election (which was pushed back from 2021 following pandemic-delayed census data for redistricting) but remains one of the council’s more conservative members.
Smith wrote in an email to INDY that he “enjoyed my interactions w/Renee the last time [they ran against each other in 2022] and respected her commitment to serve the citizens of District C … rather than to use the position as a stepping stone to higher office. Belle [sic] has raised a lot of money for her campaign, interestingly, almost all from folks outside the district. It will be fun to see how those 2 dynamics play out.”
Fact check: Of Huang’s 130 named donors to date, 62 are based in Cary and most of the rest are from Apex, Morrisville, and Raleigh.
The candidates in the at-large race, first-term incumbent Democrat Carissa Kohn-Johnson and her Republican challenger Marjorie Eastman, are perhaps the most differentiated in this election.
Housing is Kohn-Johnson’s top issue: she says Cary needs more of it at practically every price point and wants to “surgically upzone certain areas to encourage the density there where we want it.”
Her other policy priorities include environmental protections, green energy, and support for seniors and retirees (she has a background in gerontology, the scientific study of old age).
Kohn-Johnson knows that many Cary residents are worried about rising property taxes, but she stands by the town council’s unanimous vote to raise taxes by 1.5¢ for fiscal year 2026. She says costs are going up, so it would be impossible to cut taxes without cutting services.
“I like to look [my constituents] in the eyes and tell them the truth: ‘I don’t see a path to avoid raising your taxes,’ because I won’t pander and I will not lie to get a vote,” she tells INDY. “I do not see a path forward without some modest tax increases, because we have critical infrastructure work we absolutely have to do.”
Eastman, a U.S. Army combat veteran, author, and 2022 primary candidate for U.S. Senate, did not respond to INDY’s interview requests. Her campaign website says she’ll prioritize fiscal responsibility, safety, and “preserving the character of Cary.” Also on her site, she accuses Kohn-Johnson of “reckless spending” and “neglect of public safety.” Eastman writes that “crime is rising” in Cary, although the town is on multiple lists of the safest cities in the South.
During a candidate forum this week, Eastman doubled down on her crime and public spending focus, but did not give any specific suggestions for how to raise revenue or cut expenses.
Cary voters who live in Districts A and C can vote in their respective districts, and all registered voters can cast a ballot in the at-large race. Voters can look up their district here and find information about early voting locations and hours here.
Chase Pellegrini de Paur contributed reporting.
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a Report for America corps member. Follow her on Bluesky or reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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