• Durham’s Only Contested NCGA Primary
  • Local Opposition to Data Centers Grows
  • NC’s Unique History of Modernist Architecture
  • Time to Vote: Check Out Candidate Questionnaires
  • Confirmed Measles Cases in the Triangle

Good morning, readers.

Before heading into a candidate forum at St. Joseph AME Church last month, DeDreana Freeman smoothed her blazer and took a breath.

“Time to go be bubbly,” she told me.

It was a wry acknowledgment from Freeman, a former Durham city council member now running in the Democratic primary for state Senate District 22, that she’s carrying some weight into this race: she lost her last two local elections, and she’s continued to face questions about her temperament in the years since a heated exchange with council colleagues.

That said, her opponent, freshman senator Sophia Chitlik, has her own perceived liabilities: family wealth funding her campaigns, silence during Israel’s decimation of Gaza, and a federal case involving her husband’s company.

With both candidates dogged by negative tropes, but both also able to point to real records of service, the primary may come down to how voters define “doing the work.”

Freeman is running on her history of community advocacy, her tenure as the council member aggrieved constituents could count on, and her lived experience as a Black mother of three who grew up in subsidized housing. 

Chitlik, meanwhile, is running on the receipts from her first term: hundreds of constituent calls returned, dozens of bills authored, a record of fighting Republicans without burning bridges, and a willingness to call ICE “an agent of fascism” on local TV.

It’s a race worth watching, and one of the more textured local primaries in recent memory. Read more below. And have a good Thursday.

—Lena

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The latest from INDY, plus other stories around the state you’ll want to read. Handpicked every day by INDY Editor-in-Chief Sarah Willets.

Credit: Illustration by Nicole Pajor Moore

Data Dump

Opposition to data centers is gaining steam as residents oppose the planned New Hill facility, Chatham passes a temporary ban, and congressional candidates weigh in, INDY’s Jane Porter writes.

Home Base

NC is home to one of the country’s largest concentration of modernist homes. INDY’s Sarah Edwards talks with the advocates working to preserve them.

Credit: Illustration by Nicole Pajor Moore

Candidate Questionnaires

Early voting for the March primary starts today. Check out INDY’s questionnaires to learn more about the candidates, from local school boards to Congress.

Sponsored Content

EDUCATION: Durham Public Schools has fired its director of employee relations, who is accused of obstructing the investigation into a 2024 child abuse incident at Eno Valley Elementary principal, WRAL reports.

LOCAL: The Chatham Park Development near Pittsboro has grown to 8,500 acres. WUNC looks at the progress.

EDUCATION: Duke’s engineering school could soon admit transfer students from Durham Tech. The Assembly reports on what would be Duke’s first transfer program for community college engineering students.

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  • Durham libraries are offering free Spanish courses.
  • Raleigh has a new portal for paying water bills and the city is offering sessions to help residents get set up.
  • Well, we now have measles cases in Durham and Wake.
  • Starting today, the Dr. M.T. Pope House Museum in Raleigh has a new, free tour with original items from the Pope family.
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