Charles Francis is a Raleigh success story. He went from a North Raleigh public school kid in the seventies to an Ivy League education, then to a career as a trial lawyer before founding North State Bank in 2000. Along the way, he amassed considerable wealth.
His political efforts haven’t fared so well. He had a brief stint on the Raleigh City Council in 1993—he was appointed to a seat but didn’t win his election—and then unsuccessfully challenged Mayor Nancy McFarlane in 2017, losing in a runoff but garnering support from some Democrats who were dissatisfied with the independent incumbent.
This year, with McFarlane not seeking another term, Francis’s opponents are all Democrats: Mary-Ann Baldwin, Caroline Sullivan, Zainab Baloch, and George Knott.
But Francis appears to have in his corner some incumbent city council members, including Stef Mendell and David Cox—which suggests that, if you think the council’s majority is headed in the right direction, Francis might be your candidate.
He brings some progressive ideas to the table, such as a property tax freeze for senior citizens to mitigate the effects of gentrification, and expanding the number of city council members to promote diversity and inclusion.
On other hot-button issues, he’s less clear: He’s for a police oversight board, but he doesn’t know what it should look like. He wants an affordable housing bond, but he doesn’t know for how much money.
The INDY spoke with Francis at his downtown law office week about his campaign and why he believes he’s the best person for the job.
This interview has been condensed and edited for space and clarity, but you can listen to the full conversation on INDYcast, available now to stream on Soundcloud or for download on iTunes and Stitcher.
INDY: When McFarlane said she wasn’t going to run again, she said Raleigh politics needs a reset—that there’s this divisive toxicity right now. Do you see that?
CHARLES FRANCIS: I agree with her that we need a reset. I think that what the council and the city are in need of is leadership. Leadership starts with relationships, so I have relationships with several of the councilors. I’m going to build relationships with whoever’s on the council so that we can work together to not just find consensus but set consensus, and then move people toward the consensus that we need to all agree on.
You’ve been a huge big advocate for Southeast Raleigh. What do you think needs to happen in that community?
First of all, it’s a very diverse community, and we need more inclusion at the city government level. I think a lot of people in Southeast Raleigh feel that their voice has not been heard. So one thing I’m bringing to the table is to include everybody in the city—not just Southeast Raleigh, but everybody—in the decision-making process and have processes that are fair and that people feel are fair so that they feel, even when they don’t get what they want, that their voice has been heard. The second thing is the city needs to invest more public resources in Southeast Raleigh. I think it’s wonderful that the city’s focused resources, for example, on Hillsborough Street, but there are places in Southeast Raleigh that also need to be improved. For example, the streetscape in front of Saint Augustine’s University has been overdue for a facelift for quite a while. There are parks in Southeast Raleigh that require attention. I am a huge advocate for Dix Park. I’m going to be a strong advocate for Dix, but we can’t neglect Chavis Park and Lions Park and the other parks.
In terms of inclusivity, do you think we need to change the makeup of our boards and commissions?
Raleigh needs to become more diverse in many respects. I think we need to look at expanding the number of members of the city council. The city council has stayed the same size for many many years, but Raleigh has gotten much bigger. I think we should look at expanding the number of councilors—not sure the exact number, maybe by one, maybe by three—so that we don’t have an even number, including the mayor. [Editor’s note: Including the mayor, the council currently has eight members.]
What are your thoughts on a police oversight board?
The police have a really tough job. Our police need to be well paid, they need to be well-benefited, and they need to be treated as professionals. I do think that we are overdue for a citizen review board. I think that’s a level of transparency and accountability that Raleigh demands and is entitled to. Now, the way I would do it is that anyone who raised their hand for that position would have to go through extensive training once they were selected and have to spend a number of hours and days riding with police officers, seeing what policemen and policewomen do. I think doing that, they’d be better able to assess the danger that officers are in and better able to assess everyday situations and compare those to the things that go sideways that require attention when there’s excessive force or claims of excessive force.
How do you think the board should look? When city staff and the police chief presented options to the council a couple of weeks ago, they presented a hybrid of staff and citizens.
I don’t know the exact composition of the board. In general, I think that because of this council-manager form of government that we have, not just with this but across the board, too many decisions are very, very staff-driven. So I would probably go beyond those options that we got from staff and consider a wider range of possibilities—look at best practices in other cities in North Carolina and put together what the best model would be. I think Raleigh needs to be a leader. I think it’s not acceptable to say because it hasn’t been done before, we’re not going to do it. Sometimes a role in leadership is to go to the General Assembly and work with them to get changes in state law so we can move where we need to go.
Let’s talk about gentrification. As The New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago, houses are being bought up in historically African American communities and turned into half-million-dollar homes. What do you think can be done?
Changes like what you’re seeing in Southeast Raleigh and around the city are happening all over the country. In part, it’s a market function. Some aspects of it are not a bad thing. The fact that there now are white citizens who are comfortable and happy to move into a historically black neighborhood says we made progress as a society and as a people because that used to not be the case. The problem with it, of course, is that renters are pushed out. People feel culturally displaced, and so the main support that we have to give is to renters who want to remain in the community, who want to retain some level of affordable housing. So that really brings up the whole issue of affordable housing, which will be my top priority as a mayor. What I would like to be known for after my service as mayor is that I expanded options for housing, both to rent and to buy. There is a creeping affordability crisis in Raleigh. Really, it’s beyond creeping now. We’ve got to expand choices both for renters and first-time homeowners. That’s the way you deal with the deleterious effect of gentrification.
The city council has decided to hold back on seeking an affordable housing bond until 2020. What do you think would be an appropriate level for a housing bond?
I think the city probably made the right decision to postpone that bond until next year because we want to get it done, but we want to get it done properly, and we want to have support from all over the community for that. The other thing is there are other needs for bond financing, like Dix Park, perhaps, like other parks, like transit. We want to have a coordinated approach so that we’re telling the citizens all at one time, here’s what we’re asking you to borrow, there’s going to be the effect on your property tax bills, and here’s why it’s going to be a worthwhile investment.
Do you see us getting a $100 million bond—or something larger?
I think we need to go big. That’s what I’ll say right now. I don’t have a specific number for you.
It’s often said that if you raise taxes to fund affordable housing, you might be hurting the very people you’re trying to help. How would you mitigate that?
I’m not a big advocate for property tax increases because, in my practice, I have represented people who were land rich but cash poor and struggled, really struggled, to pay their property taxes. We need to figure out a way that we freeze property tax assessments for seniors; they paid taxes for decades and they paid their part. It’s not fair that their $200,000 house becomes a $500,000 house by reason of all the things happening in the neighborhood and then their tax bills go up. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, with any bond that we do, we’ve got to be conscious of what the effect is going to be on all taxpayers and make sure that there is a return on that investment that’s worthwhile.
What more do you think the city should do to improve access to public transportation?
Light rail. I mean, I think we made some improvements in bus transit, but we’ve got a ways to go. I really think we need to focus as a community on light rail and commuter rail. There are rail lines moving around Raleigh and Wake County and in between Raleigh and Durham and Raleigh and the smaller communities. The city and our transit agencies need to require access to that so that we’ve got a light rail going back and forth and into this beautiful train station we have downtown now.
Light rail just fell apart in Durham.
It all comes back to leadership. We’ve got to engage the various stakeholders, the rail companies, the state, the university. Everybody says that they are for increasing transit, but it’s just, we need leadership in order to get us there.
There’s a lot of talk about protecting neighborhoods through zoning and the use of overlay districts. What do you think about this idea, especially in wealthier areas?
I think people all over the city feel like their voices are not being heard. We’ve talked about that earlier with Southeast Raleigh. I think people feel that way over in Cameron Park. I think people feel that way in North Raleigh in the Falls area. I think they feel that way in Country Club Hills. I think people feel that way all over town. So one of the things that I’m going to do is take a real look at city processes and figure out whether or not they are not unnecessarily excluding people. People are not always are going to get the outcome they want, but if the process is fair, I think they will be more satisfied with the outcome.
Is there anything else that you want to tell our readers?
Let me tell you about why I want to do it. My family came to Raleigh one hundred years ago, and over four generations, Raleigh has been a very good place to me and my family. I want to see other people achieve the same success that we have been blessed to achieve. I want to help other people achieve the good things in life that I and my family have been able to achieve over a century in Raleigh. That’s the altruistic reason.
The selfish reason is that, when I’m old, I want a part of my body of work to be public service. I don’t want to just talk about business deals or about businesses or about cases. Raleigh is a really good city, but we can be a great city. It takes leadership, and that’s what I’m offering.
Contact staff writer Leigh Tauss at [email protected].
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Rich old people have had their chance.
Francis talks a lot about diversity and inclusion, but his history suggests he cares more about his own interests than those of minority groups of which he is not a part. Black people continue to demand more things, resources, attention, etc, but they still have no problem talking shit about gay people at church on Sunday. Sad…just say no to bigots in public office!