In our Raleigh endorsements last week, we called for the ouster of the city council’s neighborhood-protection bloc—David Cox, Stef Mendell, Kay Crowder, and Russ Stephenson. Some people got very mad at us!

Christopher thinks that, by arguing for density, we’re basically commies: “In the end, it’s more about a bunch of outsiders with no vested interest in an issue trying to tell current neighborhood residents what is in their best interest, with so much hubris. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, the property owners and folks living in a neighborhood might know what is best for it? But that has never stopped a ‘progressive’ from trying to appropriate that which belongs to somebody else for their own out of jealousy. Next, they will be advocating eminent domain to build twenty-story communal housing because, by god, it is their right to tell you that instead of a single-family home in town, you should have to live in a luxury eight-story condo building! Lenin would be proud, comrade!”

That’s not exactly how zoning works …

Anyway, over to you, Randall Kent Stagner: “The INDY is full of political BS nowadays. Raleigh may not be hip enough for you, but it’s a nice place to call home. In case anyone forgot, Raleigh isn’t just downtown, and what works there is not a model for where most of its citizens live. Russ Stephenson knows this. David Cox knows this. Stef Mendell knows this. And Kay Crowder knows this. Why doesn’t the INDY?”

“The ‘neighborhood advocate’ councilors hold supposed ‘quality of life’ and petty ‘neighborhood character’ issues—due to very modest shifts in the status quo like sidewalk construction, bike lanes, ADUs, or (the horrors) duplexes—as the paramount concerns of the council, and will spend endless hours nitpicking just to leave their stamp on a project,” counters orulz. “But Raleigh is a city, not just a collection of neighborhoods, and we face problems infinitely larger than this. These issues include: climate change, housing affordability, racial and economic equity, and the safety of cyclists and pedestrians. These endorsements acknowledge that truth. Thank you, INDY, for getting it right.”

In Durham, Michael Levine is “disappointed” in our endorsement of the three incumbents. The city council, he writes, “is indeed broken. They’ve been so engrossed with building Durham’s population, yet have done little to help with the infrastructure and affordable housing crisis, to speak nothing about the rash of gun violence. Durham needs to live within its budget. Bonds aren’t needed; fiscal responsibility is.”

And M. Stevens took issue with our contention that putting eighteen additional officers on the street wouldn’t do much to reduce gun violence. 

“That is the most flippant and ludicrous statement regarding the crime problem of Durham,” Stevens writes. “Complete political garbage. In embracing the strident anti-police activists, these Durham council members have ensured that violent crime will rise, and it has. The citizens of Durham bear the brunt of the crime that the ‘progressives’ refuse to take on and fight against.”

Finally, last week, Nick Williams reviewed the recently reopened fine-dining institution Nana’s, and found it to be an old-school restaurant in a new-school scene. 

Scott Howell, Nana’s chef-owner, did not appreciate Williams’s take: “When I was told you were coming to take pictures because you were doing a ‘review,’ the first thing that came out of my mouth was ‘great, not again.’ It’s always an inexperienced writer using big words to prove they know something about food when in fact it’s just the opposite. I get where you’re coming from, but I think your view of restaurants in incredibly narrow-minded for such a ‘liberal’ or what I would call ‘socialistic’ attitude that all restaurants have to be out of the same mold. I hope you feel better. 

“I [attached] this article that came out in The New York Times not long before I reopened. Maybe you should read how a real food writer portrays restaurants like mine. You certainly can’t be everything to everyone; it’s just not possible. Happy dining somewhere else in your Amateur Hour!” (The Times’s article was headlined, “The Best Restaurant If You’re Over 50.”)

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