After Christina Jones was elected to her first term on the Raleigh City Council in 2022, she set up a monthly meeting with representatives from the dozen or so organizations that had endorsed her campaign.
“I said, ‘After the election, we should probably have a relationship, so that [the endorsement] means something,’” Jones told the INDY in a recent interview. “Most of them did not attend those monthly meetings.”
Jones said she understands that many of the organizations are small and volunteer-led, so she didn’t take it personally. Still, it got her thinking about what an endorsement really means, and what it’s worth. In her 2026 candidate questionnaire for the neighborhood activist group Livable Raleigh, which has endorsed her, Jones urged voters to take a look at endorsing organizations’ follow-through.
“Ask these groups how they partner with, not only work against, councilors on the topics that mean the most to you. If there is no relationship with council, are your concerns being incorporated in the final decision?” she wrote.
Every election cycle, dozens of political and industry groups in Raleigh and Wake County endorse their preferred local candidates. Each one has its own procedures and litmus tests, and they can share as much or as little about them with the public as they choose. Many voters’ only engagement with these groups is at the polls, when a volunteer hands them a short voter guide on the way to the ballot box.
With Wake being a Democratic stronghold, most of the grassroots political organizations end up endorsing a variant of the Wake County Democratic Party slate. But there are always exceptions, which can point to different groups’ priorities.
Notable Omissions
In the race for two new, open at-large seats on the Wake County Board of Commissioners, the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, or RWCA, endorsed just one candidate, Democrat Christine Kushner. The RWCA is a nonpartisan, nearly century-old organization that advocates for policies and candidates that uplift “people of color and underserved communities,” according to its website. They haven’t published their endorsements online, but they have volunteers handing out voter guides at the polls. Most of the group’s endorsement process happens behind closed doors.
Earlier in the endorsement process this fall, the RWCA’s endorsement committee recommended that the group also endorse Democrat Mona Singh in the at-large race. But they were overridden during the final membership vote, according to Marionna Poke-Stewart, the chair of RWCA’s political action committee. (Poke-Stewart did not answer a question from the INDY about how many members are on the RWCA’s endorsement committee.)
“Because the vote is conducted by secret ballot, there is no collective statement of reasons for any individual outcome, and I would not presume to speak for the members who cast their ballots,” Poke-Stewart told the INDY in an email. “We have deep respect for every candidate who put themselves forward to serve, including those who were not endorsed this cycle.”
The RWCA’s endorsement committee also recommended endorsing Jones in her Raleigh City Council District E race, but the group’s full body ultimately decided not to endorse anyone for that seat. The RWCA typically endorses in every local race, so the omissions are notable.
Jones said she’s been endorsed by the RWCA in the past and she would have appreciated an explanation for why she didn’t get the endorsement this time.
“When I found out that I was recommended for endorsement, and then a small panel … changed that, I feel like that deserves a ‘why,’” she said. “I’m not mad that I didn’t get endorsed. I’m confused, and I just would love to better understand if there’s something I could do better.”
(Jones heard that a small group of RWCA members voted not to endorse her. Poke-Stewart said a quorum of members were present but declined to say how many people that was.)
Singh said voters should focus on the Wake County Democratic Party’s endorsements, which are similar to, but more complete than, the RWCA’s. To be endorsed by the WCDP, candidates must complete a questionnaire and interview with the county party’s 13 top officers, who then vote on whether to endorse them or not.
Like the RWCA, the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus has an endorsement committee that recommends a slate of candidates to the group’s full membership body. Unlike the RWCA, the Wake Progressives don’t typically make an endorsement in every local race. This year they opted to endorse Singh but not Kushner in the county commission at-large race. They also endorsed in some but not all of the school board and county commission races.
“You can almost think of the progressive endorsement as a cherry on top of the [Wake County Democratic Party] endorsement,” said Harrison Kesling, the Wake Progressives’ endorsement committee chair and a member of the Morrisville Town Council. Kesling said the caucus looked for candidates who would “prioritize the issues of the working class, the poor, civil and human rights, and environmental justice as the goal of the North Carolina Democratic Party.”
Kesling said the Wake Progressives send candidates a questionnaire and publish every questionnaire they receive, including those from candidates who don’t get their endorsement. They have an endorsement committee that recommends a slate to the full membership body, Kesling said. This year, that slate passed with no changes by a majority vote.
Several organizations and elected officials endorsed both Kushner and Singh, such as Equality North Carolina and the Sierra Club, and the candidates have appeared together at many campaign events. They’re likely to both be elected in their race against two Republicans; the real question is who will be the top vote-getter and win a four-year term. (The other electee will serve a two-year term.)
A Rescinded Endorsement
The Triangle Labor Council (TLC), the local chapter of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, endorses in most but not all local races. They initially endorsed incumbent County Commissioner Safiyah Jackson in her District 2 reelection bid, but rescinded the endorsement in September after Jackson voted in favor of the merger between WakeMed and Atrium Health.
“The Council’s decision to revoke its endorsement and not endorse another candidate in this race was solely about accountability for this vote,” wrote North Carolina State AFL-CIO communications director Jeremy Sprinkle. “The final [merger] agreement failed to include necessary binding protections for patients and workers, specifically regarding price hikes, labor neutrality, nurse-to-patient ratios, and local control over operations.”
Sprinkle said about 20 people reliably attend TLC endorsement meetings, and that the votes to endorse Jackson and later rescind her endorsement were both unanimous.
Jackson, a Democrat, is running against Republican John Adcock in the county’s most politically competitive district, where there are slightly more registered Republicans than Democrats and unaffiliated voters outnumber both parties. In response to the TLC’s decision, Jackson pointed to the amendments Wake County was able to negotiate in the Atrium deal, including more local investment, indigent care, and local governance than the original agreement provided for.
“A commitment to supporting working families and good-paying local jobs is central to my career and public service,” Jackson wrote in a message to the INDY. “It is disappointing a single-issue decision led an organization to revoke an endorsement.”
She added that federal antitrust laws prevented WakeMed and Atrium from negotiating on wages and staffing ratios before the merger was finalized.
Endorsed Candidates at Odds
Some groups have narrow, hyperlocal endorsement criteria. That’s what led Livable Raleigh to endorse both Joshua Bradley, a member of the Green Party, and Whitney Hill, a Republican, for an at-large and District A seat, respectively, on the Raleigh City Council this year. Bradley and Hill have very different views on policing, how Raleigh should respond to federal immigration enforcement, and the role private developers should play in growing the city’s affordable housing stock. But they’re not so far apart on Livable Raleigh’s top priorities: increasing affordable housing and community engagement and managing the city’s growth. On Livable Raleigh’s candidate questionnaires, which the group publishes online, they both committed to preserving existing Raleigh neighborhoods and listening to the community.
“We thought that was kind of unexpected, maybe even a little bit humorous, to do that kind of thing,” said Russ Stephenson, a former at-large Raleigh City Council member who’s now active with Livable Raleigh, of endorsing two such different candidates. “But the more we talked about it amongst ourselves, we said, ‘On the things we care about and that Raleigh residents care about the most, they’re pretty darn close.’”
“Whitney Hill, as a Republican, has some ideas that I don’t agree with,” added Tim Niles, another Livable Raleigh member. “But they’re mostly on national issues, and you’re not going to get very far with those with the other seven councilors on Raleigh City Council. So I don’t think he’ll be … capable of doing anything weird.”
Hill said he and Livable Raleigh agree that “we do not want what is great about Raleigh to be destroyed while Raleigh is growing,” and that affordable neighborhoods should be protected.
“Endorsements are a funny thing,” Bradley said. “A lot of people are endorsed together that wouldn’t seem logical. … And when people talk about affordable housing, we need to ask what they mean. … I’m a socialist. We need to make sure we have housing for the people that need it most, the people that are being pushed out, people that are living in the woods.”
Bradley said some organizations endorse the candidate they expect to win because they want relationships with elected officials. So as an underdog—he placed fourth in the six-way at-large primary in March—he was pleasantly surprised when he received the TLC’s endorsement this year.
“I’m of the opinion that you should always endorse the candidate that aligns with you closely,” he said, “but I understand that organizations do like [having] influence.”
In addition to candidate questionnaires, Livable Raleigh published the results of a citywide poll it commissioned to gauge residents’ attitudes on local issues. Stephenson and Niles said the poll informed the questions they posed to candidates and the criteria they used for endorsements.
Livable Raleigh has an advisory committee of about 12 people who vote on the group’s endorsements by a two-thirds vote.
“We’re endorsing people that we think will do more to engage the public, balance growth … and to produce more affordable housing,” Stephenson said. “What we would dearly love to see in the coming council is a majority that was ready to move forward on those things.”
Niles and Stephenson said they’ve been disappointed by what they perceive as the current council’s unwillingness to meaningfully engage with the public. They pointed out that three out of four council committees have not met this year, which limits discussion and public input. They said Livable Raleigh still remembers when the council dismantled the city’s volunteer Citizens Advisory Councils in 2020 (they have since been restored) and extended their terms in office by a year in 2021.
“When I was on council, we had lots of committee meetings with lots of opportunity to talk to the development side, have them hear from the neighbors, and vice versa,” Stephenson said. “But the way it seems like it’s been working in the last five or six years is that most of the discussion happens very early on in the process, and not so much in committees or in commentary by councilors in public.”
The result is that Livable Raleigh endorsed newcomers over incumbents in five out of eight council races.
Jones, the District E Raleigh City Council member, urged voters to ask candidates directly about their endorsements and non-endorsements if they’re confused.
“I really hope residents take it with a grain of salt, but also understand that there is work to do on their end outside of just blindly trusting organizations that they may or may not be involved in,” she said.
Other local organizations that made endorsements or recommendations this year include the Wake County Voter Education Coalition, Citybuilder, the local Teamsters union, the Wake County Republican Party, and the Raleigh firefighters’ union.
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