Two weeks ago, the INDY published its editorial endorsements for all local elections on Triangle voters’ ballots. You can see our list of endorsed candidates in our clip-out voter guide. We updated the voter guide to include a recommendation about the constitutional amendment on all North Carolina voters’ ballots this fall (see Chase Pellegrini de Paur’s story on the constitutional amendment). While the response to our recommendations has been quieter this election cycle than in election cycles past, plenty of readers still had thoughts, particularly about our endorsement of incumbent city council member Christina Jones in the Raleigh District E race. We’re sharing a few here. 

From reader Joseph L. Riddick in Raleigh: 

As a longtime resident of the Raleigh City Council’s District E, I’m disappointed that IndyWeek endorsed erratic incumbent council member Christina Jones for re-election—especially without reporting her record accurately.

Jones talks a good game about supporting public safety, but her record belies her rhetoric. When it came time to vote this year for a raise for Raleigh’s police, firefighters, and 911 operators, Jones voted flatly, without explanation: No.

Raleigh has a rising crime rate and not nearly enough police officers. The city must increase police pay to hire more officers. Jones knows this, and still voted no.

She likewise rejected alternative policing programs to hire social worker response partners and mental-health crisis clinicians, as well as a homeless-encampment response plan.

Jones also voted against $233 million in badly needed city water and sewer projects, $42 million in parks and recreation upgrades, $11.4 million to promote affordable housing, and $88 million in city transportation projects, many of them in District E.

Meanwhile, Jones spent her time representing us at the council table chanting with pro-Hamas protesters who demanded a pointless resolution calling for a ceasefire in a war 6,000 miles away over which our city has zero control. She seems to care more about Ramallah than Raleigh.

Despite Jones’ distractions and dereliction, you concluded that she “has done the work to earn another term.”

I couldn’t disagree more. I urge fellow District E voters to elect the far more responsible candidate, John Cerqueira.

From reader Daniel Komansky in Raleigh: 

I wish that your endorsement of Christina Jones for re-election to Raleigh City Council, District E, had addressed Ms. Jones’s divisive conduct during her current term in office. As just two examples, Ms. Jones has recently made the following public statements:

Using her “christinaforraleigh” Instagram account, Ms. Jones “liked” a September 10, 2024, post in which the writer urges “overthrow” of “the whole capitalist system”, which the writer claimed is responsible for “imperialism, oppression, genocide .. racist oppressive extractionism” [sic]. Ms. Jones, a sitting elected official, is perfectly entitled to state her opinion by “liking” calls for “overthrow” of “the whole capitalist system”, but to do so while she purports to be an advocate for Raleigh’s hard working small business community is, at minimum, disingenuous and deceptive to her constituents.

Also using her “christinaforraleigh” Instagram account, Ms. Jones “liked” a July 19, 2024, Instagram post in which the post’s writer calls Israel “a criminal state.” That writer is the same person who, as your paper reported, Ms. Jones publicly embraced in City Council chambers and who called Hamas’s October 7 mass murder, rape and kidnapping of babies, children, women and elderly Holocaust survivors “a beautiful day.”

Ms. Jones is certainly entitled to her opinions and to her alliances, as disturbing as they are, but is her conduct becoming of an elected public official who claims to show “… empathy and respect to those in need”? 

More importantly, should Indy Week reward that conduct by bestowing its endorsement upon Ms. Jones. Respectfully, no.

From reader Tim Niles in Raleigh:

Your Raleigh City Council endorsements seemingly are judging different candidates using different standards. One glaring example is the issue of the 2020 council disbanding Raleigh’s 50 year-old CACs. You note positively that Councilor Corey Branch voted against the disbanding. On the other hand, the only other candidate running for council who has a record on this issue is Jonathan Lambert-Melton who voted in favor of disbanding the CACs. But, you made no mention of this in your analysis. If the issue was important enough to mention for one candidate, it should have been mentioned for both.

Similarly, you could have mentioned the issue of moving Red Hat for both Branch and Lambert-Melton. Branch is the Council Liaison to the Raleigh Convention & Performing Arts Centers. Lambert-Melton is liaison to the Raleigh Convention Center & Visitors’ Bureau.

Both of these council members should have been well informed of the plans for moving Red Hat and closing South Street if they were actually doing their jobs as liaisons. They both should have been keeping the rest of the City Council informed. 

The excuse that council just recently was informed of these plans doesn’t pass muster unless you believe neither of these council members were doing their jobs as liaisons. If that’s the case, it should be campaign-ending for both of them.

From Cary reader Bruce Roger:

While I always appreciate Indy’s Voter Guide endorsements, I think you missed the mark re. the Cary Municipal Bond issue. The $560M bond is way too costly and the impact to Cary residents’ property taxes is far more than the “9¢ tax increase” portrayed by the Town of Cary’s mailer which was sent to all residents this week. Please see carybonds.info.

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