Will the Wake County Democratic Party (WCDP) leadership again endorse Democratic candidates over other Democratic candidates for Raleigh City Council like it did in 2022? 

Raleigh City Council seats are nonpartisan, meaning there is no political party affiliation beside the candidate’s name on the ballot. Until 2022, these seats were up every two years in traditionally nonpartisan odd-year election cycles. Raleigh city councilors have historically dealt with nonpartisan policy issues, not partisan politics.

In 2022, party leadership chose to endorse two Democratic challengers who were first-time candidates who’d never run for elected office, much less held one. They chose these candidates over their incumbent Democratic opponents—the female mayor, who had been on council for 10 years prior to running for mayor, and an African-American councilor who had been on council for eight years. Which candidates do you think were objectively and relatively more qualified and competent?

Unfortunately, this decision to take time and effort to endorse in nonpartisan Raleigh City Council races doesn’t just impact local politics. A major concern to Democratic candidates who represent Wake County in higher offices, such as the NC General Assembly and the U.S. Congress, is that the WCDP leadership will again focus on the nonpartisan Raleigh City Council races and neglect Democratic candidates in partisan races at the top of the ticket like it did in 2022. They are not the only ones concerned, as many Raleigh community and business leaders feel the same way. 

The WCDP had a low voter turnout in 2022 during an important election year when an open U.S. Senate seat was in question. Low turnout by Democrats in Wake County was blamed as one of the main reasons for Justice Cheri Beasley losing the U.S. Senate race that year.*

Will the party leadership focus on the nonpartisan Raleigh City Council races at the bottom of the ballot again this year, and neglect Democratic candidates in partisan races at the top of the ticket?

In 2022, the WCDP had volunteers at every voting station handing out their endorsement sheet. Guess what the sheet told the voter to do first in the voting booth? You would be wrong if you said vote for the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket. Rather, it said go to the end of the ballot, because there were new races on the ballot, and you, uninformed voter, should vote for them first. Lo and behold, these were the Raleigh City Council races. To make matters worse, approximately two-thirds of the Wake County voters in the 2022 election had never voted before in the city council elections, because in the past, the city council elections were held in odd years when only local government races were on the ballot.

This year, will the WCDP leadership again choose to focus on the nonpartisan city council races instead of focusing on the top of the Democratic ticket? 

This year, the top of the state ticket are the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public schools races, which are all partisan, and the most important races to the citizens of Raleigh and North Carolina. What’s the solution?

In the future, move the local nonpartisan races back to a separate election cycle, as they have historically always been, so they don’t tempt the partisan political parties to become focused on them and therefore become de facto partisan races. It is too late to do that for this year’s election, so hopefully the WCDP leadership will choose to do its job—focus on getting voters out for the top of the Democratic ticket—and not spend time and effort dividing local Democratic voters.

*Editor’s note: While voter turnout in Wake County was down in the 2022 midterms (55.8%) over 2018 (59.2%), Mecklenburg County, with turnout well below the state average in 2022, is typically blamed for Beasley’s loss. And while Democratic turnout in Wake in 2022 (57.9%) was lower than Republican turnout (62.2%), a large portion of the county’s unaffiliated voters who turned out in 2022 (51%) would have voted for Democrats.

David Knight is a former Raleigh City Council member from District E.