Our streak has ended, dear reader. 

There will now be at least one person serving on the Raleigh and Durham city councils whom the INDY has not endorsed: David Cox, who bested Brian Fitzsimmons last week. But Raleigh voters filled in the bubble for the rest of our choices—even the underdogs—and in Durham, our three picks for the city council ran the table in the primary, making them the presumptive favorites headed into November. 

Fourteen-for-fifteen is a pretty good batting average, we’d say. 

Enough gloating. This week, a new round of elections begins. And while there are no runoffs in Raleigh, there is an important general election (and bond referendum) in Durham, as well as municipal elections in Orange County. Some of these races lack the drama we saw in the Triangle’s largest city, but these towns are grappling with many of the same challenges—housing affordability, economic development, growth, traffic, and so on—and your vote will dictate the direction they take. 

Before we dive into our endorsements, a caveat: We don’t cover Orange County with the same intensity that we do local governments in Durham and Wake, and, to be honest, we worried about parachuting in where we didn’t belong. For that reason—as we did with Cary—we chose not to endorse in races for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education; we simply don’t know enough about the issues facing the school board or the candidates running for it to offer an educated opinion. (We did, however, send school board candidates a questionnaire; you can see their responses at indyweek.com/elections.) 

But we did bone up on the choices facing voters in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough: their survey responses, their endorsements, what our trusted sources tell us, etc. And ultimately, we believe we’ve selected the candidates who best align with our values and who will most effectively move these towns forward.

Comment on these endorsements at backtalk@indyweek.com.

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One reply on “Endorsements 2019: Our Recommendations in Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough”

  1. Don’t go with socialism, dear reader. People need the satisfaction of personal achievement, which socialism disallows

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