Greensboro Mayor

Incumbent: Nancy Vaughan

Challengers: John Brown, Dianne Moffett

Vaughan is the first person since Keith Holliday to be reelected. She campaigned to be more transparent four years ago than her predecessor but has been less so. Like most mayors, she has ignored the city's east side. While there are members of the creative community who have developed a rapport with her, Vaughan's commitment to the Tanger PAC and the city's old guard seriously compromises her position as a friend of the arts.

Her first opponent, Brown, says that he's a supporter of the arts but unlike ex-mayor Bill Knight, I've never seen him at any of the local arts events. He might frequent the same art events as the city's 1% but none of the really groundbreaking or iconoclastic stuff. Then, there's this (and four more like it).

The other challenger, Moffett, is a popular pastor in East Greensboro. The catch is that her downtown apartment isn't her primary residence.

The underlying premise is that Vaughan is unpopular but not unpopular enough for a unifying opponent to dethrone her. Absent a major political earthquake, one of the challengers will be eliminated on October 10. Conservatives in West Greensboro are unlikely to support Moffett if Brown is eliminated and could sit out the mayor's race like they did in '13 and '15. Meanwhile, blacks in East Greensboro are just as unlikely to support Brown if Moffett is eliminated and could either skip the mayoral selection or very reluctantly support Vaughan.

As a result, I am encouraging the creative community to skip this race in the primary and the primary only.

Greensboro City Council At-Large

Incumbents: Marikay Abuzuaiter, Mike Barber, Yvonne Johnson

Challengers: Irving David Allen, M.A. Bakie, T. Dianne Bellamy-Small, Jodi Bennett-Bradshaw, Tijuana Hayes, Sylvine Hill, James Ingram, Dan Jackson, Michelle Kennedy, Andy Nelson, Lindy Perry-Garnette, Dave Wils

There are four challengers for every incumbent--that alone should say something about how fed up people really are with Greensboro's business as usual government. 2015 was the first time since the current 5-3-1 system was implemented in 1983 that there were no primaries for the at-large seats as there were only three challengers

Obviously, it would be a horrible outcome if all three incumbents prevail in November. However, there's another outcome that would be arguably worse: the city's political clans co-opting the anti-incumbent sentiment by deeming one of the incumbents expendable (likely Abuzuaiter or Barber) and using an outsider to further their corporatist ends.

Rather than break down every single candidate running in this race, I have decided to place the 15 candidates into five tiers and provide explanations for some candidates. The first tier will be my official endorsements, the second tier represents candidates I would like to see advance to the general election, and the last one automatically includes the three incumbents.

Tier 1: Allen, Hill, Kennedy
Tier 2: Wils, Perry-Garnette, Hayes
Tier 3: Bennett-Bradshaw, Bakie, Nelson
Tier 4: Ingram, Jackson, Bellamy-Small
Tier 5: Johnson, Abuzuaiter, Barber

Allen: He was a panelist at Elsewhere's election night party last year and is a cool guy.

Bellamy-Small: She needs to figure out whether she wants to represent the county's schoolchildren or return to the Melvin Municipal Building.

Bennett-Bradshaw: I wanted to support her but her platform is very vague despite her saying all of the right things.

Ingram: He's backed by the some of the very state legislators responsible for dragging the state's reputation through the mud.

Jackson: In the mold of Wilkins? No thanks!

Greensboro District 5

Incumbent: Tony Wilkins

Challengers: Sal Leone, Tanner Lucas, Tammi Thurm

Wilkins was the first one of the three City Councilmen to be appointed--except in his case he had to overcome a hostile effort by then-Mayor Robbie Perkins to prevent him from being appointed after Trudy Wade got elected to the State Senate in 2012.

The incumbent is the biggest obstacle to the arts community hands down. First, he wrote a Facebook post in 2013 that inaccurately described a routine done by Foxy Moxy at the inaugural East-West BBQ Fest. The truth was that the performance was at a tent that was clearly marked as "adults only."

The second incident happened at the beginning of this year when he called the Fire Department on Geeksboro before the Idiot Box held "A Trump Roast." It's clear to me that the county's GOP bigwigs didn't appreciate the comedy club poking fun at the most humorless president in decades and needed to slow the momentum of the Idiot Box and Geeksboro.

Leone advanced to the primary election four years ago. His anti-East Greensboro slam won't win him any friends on that side of town given that this is his fourth run for Greensboro office (his last one was the anticlimactic '15 mayoral race).

Lucas has some good ideas but the district skews older demographically, so I'm giving the edge to Thurm.

Greensboro District 4

Incumbent: Nancy Hoffmann
Challenger: Gary Kenton
Withdrawn: Andrew Belford

Because candidates had to withdraw their names from the ballot before the filing window closed on July 21, the five candidates who are out of their respective races will still be listed on the primary ballot.

Belford kept a low profile and said he entered the race so Hoffmann wouldn't run unopposed like she did two years ago. Under normal circumstances, it would be enough for me to endorse him but since Kenton is the more formidable candidate, I'll go with the latter.

Greensboro District 3

Incumbent: Justin Outling

Challengers: Antuan Marsh, Craig Martin

Withdrawn: Payton McGarry

Outling is a walking conflict of interest. His law firm does business with the city and the whole United Healthcare debacle stinks to high heaven. He might be the first black person to serve a majority white district in Greensboro but he can speak the language of the elites with the rest of them (after all, Irving Park does lie in this district).

While either one of the incumbent's remaining challengers would be a marked improvement, I have to give Martin the slight edge over Marsh. Martin seems to be the favorite from members of the creative community and Black Lives Matter activists.

Greensboro District 2

Seat holder: Goldie Wells

Challengers: C.J. Brinson, Jim Kee

Withdrawn: Felicia Angus, Tim Vincent

Jamal Fox resigned from his seat to move to Portland, OR with his girlfriend. He handpicked Vincent to replace him but the City Council opted to pick Wells (just like how City Council opted to appoint Justin Outling after Zack Matheny wanted former councilman Tom Phillips to replace him two years ago).

Wells is the third person in three election cycles to be appointed to her seat and then run for a full term. She represented District 2 from 2005 to 2009.

Wells's successor, Jim Kee, served two terms of his own before losing to Fox in 2013. The main reason to not support Kee's return other than the fact that he's been in office before is the fact that he's backed by developer interests like ex-mayor Robbie Perkins--hence, Kee's beholden to at least one of the city's political clans.

Both Wells and Kee had their chances and it's clearly time for a new generation to represent East Greensboro--Northeast Greensboro in particular. Fox should have been that person but he eventually got pulled in by the Marty Kotis and Roy Carroll factions.

Brinson is that person to represent East Greensboro because he gets it. He gets who Revolution Mill really caters to. I have seen some of my creative friends hold events there but most of them and the people who attended such events in the past aren't of the same skin color as me. As much as I enjoyed said events, East Greensboro residents are not the ones who are benefiting from the mill, it's the old money Irving Park crowd who once upon a time let Downtown Greensboro rot until the creative class helped revive it.

Greensboro District 1

Incumbent: Sharon Hightower
Challengers: Devin King, Paula Ritter-Lipscomb
Withdrawn: Charles Patton, Jr.

There's a sense from this post that Hightower has let her Southeast Greensboro community down even though she's only been in office for four years after a 10 year run by Dianne Bellamy-Small.

Her first opponent, Devin King, advanced to the second round of the 2015 mayoral race--only to garner a minuscule 12 percent. How he thinks his conservative philosophy lines up with the concerns of the district is beyond me.

Hightower's second opponent, Ritter-Lipscomb is the best bet to turn Southeast Greensboro around.

It makes me wonder why I'm still even here. The Triad is DONE

Greensboro ranks among worst metros for private-sector jobs growth

Hat tip EZ Greensboro

The Greensboro metro has lost 5,700 private-sector jobs during the past 10 years, lagging behind the growth rates of many of the nation’s major markets, according to a federal report issued Wednesday."
Greensboro is 65th in the national rankings. The local metro declined 1.8 percent from 325,000 private-sector jobs in July 2007 to 319,300 last month.
This 10-year comparison is an effective indicator of the extent to which any given market has bounced back from the Great Recession, which officially extended from December 2007 to June 2009.
Each of the top five metros, including Raleigh (ranked fourth, 24.1 percent growth, edit done by me), logged 10-year growth rates that exceed 21 percent. The five major markets at the bottom of the list — including Greensboro — are the only areas that now have fewer private-sector jobs now than a decade ago.
Charlotte ranked 16th with 14.8 percent growth.

Quite frankly, I would take a broom and sweep all 18 seatholders out of office in Greensboro and High Point but my options are limited.

Local Elections and the Creatives

I have decided to take a look at the local elections from the viewpoint of how the issues affect the creative community.

Greensboro

The effort by state senator Trudy Wade to redraw the city's district lines has been permanently shelved by the courts and the end result is a very high number of people filing to take out all nine seat holders. Since I hang out here, I know a lot of members of the artist community. Ultimately, my picks and opinions will stray away from conventional belief because I have seen and heard things that would make most people's heads spin.

Following the results of a 2015 referendum, this year's elections will be the last ones until 2021 since four year terms were approved by the voters. Choose very wisely, Greensboro.

There are a lot of issues that need to be tackled: 

• a salary raise the City Council gave itself in mid 2016
• the Tanger Performing Arts Center and its potential to destroy the city's arts scene
• this area has ranked #1 in food hardship since 2015
• the ability to stand up to the Gate City's various political clans
• this is the third straight election cycle where a seat holder appointed to finish an unexpired term has decided to run for a full term, which plays into the hands of said clans
• the continued neglect of East Greensboro

High Point

This is the first time since 2005 that elections are being held in odd numbered years and with primaries. Only 11 percent bothered to turn out for that year's election. The hope in moving elections to even numbered years was to boost turnout. Instead, voters often skipped city elections after voting in higher profile state and national elections and on top of that, every race was winner take all, which led to some candidates being elected with less than 50 percent.

Here in the Furniture City, it's been about the Three H's (which is a sadder riff of what my high school classmate once said about the city being famous for furniture and Fantasia, hence the Two F's): hunger, heroin, and homicides.

At the same time, baseball and revitalization have also become big topics. North Main Street may not be street dieted but other parts of town have seen their streets have reduced lanes in order to make neighborhoods more pedestrian friendly. Andres Duany was brought here in 2013, which was also the same time tactical urbanism was being bandied about. The end result was that some of ideas have been adopted while others have been ignored. North Main through parts of Uptowne was closed between the fall and spring furniture markets. The construction project led to rerouted traffic and one business closing but that has not made much of an impact to this point.

When it wasn't busy chasing young creatives out of the Pit, past City Councils were doing something stupid as getting a Chinese entity to do a sculpture and passing it off as "local" simply because the prototype was done by a resident of the High Point area. The good news is that the current city government eventually allowed murals to be done in the Pit again--the result was a project that was conducted in conjunction with a nearby beer festival back in May.

Exit National Folk Festival, Enter NC Folk Festival

The three year run of the National Folk Festival in Greensboro has come to an end and as it turns out, contrary to what I said last year, the big players in Greensboro do have a plan for next year and beyond, and it's called the North Carolina Folk Festival.

That was a big surprise to me given that I thought for sure that the city's leaders were going all in with the still unbuilt and structureless performing arts center and also I thought that Guilford County's long reputation of naysaying out of the ordinary stuff would have precluded such an event.

While I don't have any issues with the pending spinoff, I do have to question the logistics and public support. First, the bus issues have to be fixed because they were terrible this year. Instead of continuing the increased frequencies (they were every 30 minutes during the festival in '15 and three routes ran every 7-8 minutes while the other routes ran every 30 minutes last year), the regular hourly schedule was used. 

Second, a friend of mine pointed out last year some of the inner workings of the Greensboro arts scene and said that the midsized organizations had been getting less funding due to ArtsGreensboro giving all of its money to the National Folk Festival. I don't believe that 100 percent of ArtsGreensboro funding will go the NCFF, but if it does, then there could be trouble with other arts organizations in town--a prime example is that the Greensboro Fringe Festival almost went out of business due to it falling short of fundraising goals earlier this year.