Last November, Ben Clapsaddle unseated 24-year incumbent Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones, receiving over 70% of the vote. He ran on a platform of sustainable growth, fiscal responsibility, social inclusivity, and community engagement. Under state law, the mayoralty is largely symbolic, with the mayor all but limited to presiding over meetings, issuing proclamations, and casting the occasional tie-breaking vote. But there is one mayoral power the North Carolina General Assembly cannot take away: the bully pulpit. And Clapsaddle intends to use it. At his inauguralState of the Town Address last month, he devoted particular concern to food insecurity and veterans’ issues.
Clapsaddle’s victory marks a sea change in this town. His strongest precinct was 19-09, which comprises the town’s rapidly expanding eastern frontier. Oddly enough, this was the same part of town where Donald Trump performed best in 2024. But unlike Trump, Clapsaddle is a Democrat—the first in decades to lead Wake Forest.
Despite the town’s growing diversity and professed ideals, there is an abiding conservatism about the place—its elegant homes, its gnarled oaks. It is Wake Forest, after all, that birthed prominent segregationist I. Beverly Lake Sr. The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which maintains influence over town affairs, has inculcated leaders such as megachurch pastor Mark Harris, who now sits in Congress on a solidly MAGA basis.Ventilation tycoon and free-market ideologue Robert Luddy lives in Wake Forest and operates several places of learning throughout the Triangle. The Human Rights Campaign calls one of his schools, Thales Academy, “horribly anti-LGBTQ.” Thales’ Wake Forest campus is situated in the labyrinthine club community ominously named Heritage.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are personal for Ben Clapsaddle. He’s the first person of color (his mother was Korean) to lead Wake Forest and may well even be the first Asian American mayor in state history.
Clapsaddle grew up a self-proclaimed “half-breed” kid in segregated Cumberland County. The local white school would not accept him and his sister, nor would the Black school. The two were whisked off to the school for other races. This ordeal, in addition to moving frequently due to his father’s military service, no doubt left young Clapsaddle with some sense of rootlessness. He joined the Army, which offered him a clear sense of direction.
That driving need for belonging led Clapsaddle to Wake Forest in 2005. Clapsaddle’s first election bid was in 2011, when he came in sixth among a crowded field vying for a seat on the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners. His ambitions on hold, he focused on his children and his military career. There were few other military families in town, yet the Desert Storm veteran felt welcomed. He says, “Wake Forest, especially schoolteachers, reached out to help military kids.” Whether his son Nathan, who is gay, would also be welcomed was another matter.
In June 2024, Wake Forest was one of the last municipalities in Wake County to sign onto an interlocal nondiscrimination agreement—nearly three years after its initial passage. Wake Forest’s change of heart likely would not have been possible without the vote of Clapsaddle. One among many factors in his support was an act of vandalism that occurred weeks before his swearing-in as commissioner in December 2023. A Little Free Library dedicated to the LGBT community and built by a local Girl Scout troop was stolen. It had been ripped from its post. The next day, Clapsaddle visited the scene “to personally apologize on behalf of the town.”
Tensions only mounted as Wake Forest prepared to host its first-ever Pride festival that October. The Main Street-friendly event was ultimately a success, with the somber protests of evangelicals all but ignored.
But that changed last September. Facing mounting pressure from seminary leadership and the North Carolina Values Coalition, then-Mayor Jones chose not to issue a proclamation recognizing LGBTQ+ History Month. In a redacted email obtained by citizen journalist Tom Baker IV, seminary executive Ryan Hutchinson issued an apparent veiled threat to the town manager. The seminary controls hundreds of acres in town and has lent its weight to several development projects, including plans for a UNC Health hospital. Such plans might have been jeopardized if the seminary’s line in the sand was crossed. Jones reversed course later that same day.
After first sidestepping the subject in an interview, Clapsaddle conceded, “I really believe that [Mayor Jones] tried to do what was the right thing, but I just wish she would have stuck with her guns.” However, he does not believe the about-face played a role in Jones’ loss. “I think I ran a much better campaign,” he said. Clapsaddle was swept into office by the same anti-incumbent wave that overtook several Triangle suburbs and, indeed, the nation’s largest city. But make no mistake—Clapsaddle is no Zohran Mamdani (although the two did both receive campaign contributions from supposed progressive billionaire Liz Simons).
Clapsaddle, despite his blue-collar sensibilities, does not position himself as a disruptor a la hizzoner. On the contrary, he appears cautious, deferential, and even camera-shy. But he will fight when necessary. Evidenced by his office bookshelf, Clapsaddle is a student of one Lyndon Baines Johnson. Whereas the latter perfected “the Johnson Treatment”—a means of persuasion characterized by emotional and physical smothering—the former opts for a folksier method he calls “[the] fuss and cuss.”
In his two years on the board of commissioners, Clapsaddle distinguished himself as something of a maverick—perhaps in the mold of fellow serviceman John McCain. He demonstrated on a number of occasions his willingness to vote strategically. For instance, in December 2024, he joined conservative Commissioner Faith Cross in opposing a measure to move forward with the creation of a Wake Forest social district. But unlike Cross, his opposition was not so much moral as it was technical. Clapsaddle alleged that some downtown establishments, like Over the Falls and Norse Brewery (a favorite haunt), were initially left out of the scheme. “I thought it was unfair,” he said. For reasons that are less clear, Clapsaddle also voted against a fee on developers that would fund needed infrastructure improvements. Clapsaddle’s political maneuvering has not endeared him to everyone at Town Hall—though he certainly seems to be popular with the ladies at the front desk. But behind chamber doors, Clapsaddle readily admitted, “I can be the most arrogant, hard-headed person around.”
That said, there is a softer side to the man. His daughter, Ranie, was adopted from Guatemala. When deportations first ramped up under the Obama administration, “I insisted, because I was her father, that she carry all the proper IDs with her,” he said. Clapsaddle recalled that under former Sheriff Donnie Harrison, an immigration hardliner, there was “a lot of profiling” of Hispanic residents in Wake County. Now, with the Supreme Court’s approval, such tactics have only expanded in use.
Ranie is a U.S. citizen, but that is no guarantee of her safety. Hundreds of citizens have been caught up in ICE raids, including one in Cary. Clapsaddle fears for his daughter, now grown and married. “I’m always afraid of the phone call from her husband, saying, ‘Did Ranie stop at your house?’” he said.
The mayor has a message for federal agents: Get a warrant. Amid the government’s bloody occupation of Minneapolis, Clapsaddle appeals for calm and the rule of law. “I would ask that [agents] respect our schools, they respect our churches, they respect our private homes, and private businesses,” he said.
Clapsaddle proudly draws attention to the fact that his mayoral campaign was almost entirely self-funded, albeit with no reported expenditures, aside from a $500 penalty paid to the state Board of Elections by his son. Clapsaddle smiles, a twinkle in his eye. “We always sent our paperwork in late.” His unsuccessful 2022 run for the Wake County Board of Education, however, drew considerably more attention from the donor class. Top contributors that cycle were Raleigh power couple Dean and Sesha Debnam, as well as Simons, the previously mentioned California kingmaker. Clapsaddle suspects it was the Debnams who put him on Simons’ radar.
Clapsaddle had come of age in Fayetteville, an Army brat. He and his family lived in a trailer, to which he ascribed a sensitivity to “all walks of life.” He expressed his regret over former Wake Forest Mayor George Mackie’s sale of a mobile home community in 2021, which displaced almost 50 families. He mused, “Is it right by the law? Perhaps. Is it right by the people? And is it right for the future generations?”
Boosters prefer to market Wake Forest as an affluent bedroom community, but the town’s roots are inescapably working-class. Manual labor, free or enslaved, built its cherished historic properties. One such property, the Royall Cotton Mill, was the site of a violent strike in 1951 that made national headlines. The mill closed in 1976 and took about 230 jobs with it. Today, heirs to the mill workers’ legacy—cashiers, trash collectors, housekeepers, and delivery drivers—still live in town, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to do so.
Wake Forest’s housing market predominantly serves an upwardly mobile, tech-savvy clientele (disposable income, 1.9 kids, maybe a golden retriever). Poorer families, like those in Wellington Park, are being squeezed out. Cuts in SNAP and Medicaid funding haven’t helped. In the wake of these cuts (courtesy of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act), civil society stepped in. Clapsaddle marveled, “It was amazing, the amount of food [donated]. … The Tri-Area Ministry, the various churches, the various social groups that work hard to bring more food for people.” The mayor is planning a food insecurity summit for August.
The poorest part of Wake Forest, according to the American Community Survey, is a section of the traditionally Black “Northeast” neighborhood, where the average per capita income sits at around $24,000. Clapsaddle conceded that gentrification is a growing problem. Reflecting on the significance of Black History Month, Clapsaddle added, “I’m trying to honor not just what the Northeast community is today, but what it has been in the past.” Starting in 2027, the town plans to make improvements to the local Ailey Young Park.
Clapsaddle also plans to revive the town’s Youth in Government Advisory Board, which commissioners abolished in 2020. Clapsaddle laments, “Right now, besides through some other community activities, we don’t have a voice for our young people. Our high school-age kids,” he said. His campaign even hired a youth advisor, with whom Clapsaddle shared his ideas for a “Spring Future Fest” that would “ensure that the voices of Gen Z are not only heard but truly valued and celebrated.”
The mayor recalled a meaningful conversation he had with a stranger not too long ago. The young man told Clapsaddle he was “struggling with his identity.” He vowed never to return to Wake Forest after high school, “because he didn’t feel that he could live the life he wanted to [there].” In 2024, he came home for the inaugural Wake Forest Pride festival.
Brooks Street convulsed with color. Artisans peddled their wares, children squealed, and hands intertwined—all in full view of the town chapel’s spire. Nathan Clapsaddle, taking a break from a dance with his fiancé, embraced his father: “Dad, who would have ever thunk? That Wake Forest, North Carolina, would do this?”
Times have changed.
Ben Clapsaddle inherits a town in transition. The population almost quintupled between 2000 and 2025, out-of-staters fueling much of this growth. They brought with them their foreign, godless ways—their BlackBerrys, their MBAs, their jazz CDs bought at Starbucks. Now, multistory apartment buildings and longleaf pines jostle for prominence. A cluster of old silos off the state Route 98 bypass stands besieged by charming three-beds. Traffic is getting worse. Wake Forest, and countless places like it across the South, is more diverse than ever before. And the “good ole days” are, well, gone with the wind.
In the game of thrones that is suburbia, the realtors’ association, the chamber of commerce, the rotary club, the PTA, and the HOA all wield considerable power—but can the mayor match it?
Clapsaddle, like a Lincoln or a Bush Sr., plays the long game. Betraying a well-camouflaged ego, he declared, “The mark I’ll make on this town is something that’s 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road. Because that’s what’s important.”
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