Recapping Greensboro Primaries

Some Surprises, But Mostly Business as Usual

The worst-case scenario would have been a future City Council divided between gradually giving police more money (most people on the outgoing City Council) and exponentially giving the police more money (a position shared by Rossabi, Wilkins and Fentress). Instead, it looks like only Wilkins is likely to win in July as Fentress is gone. 

Given the increased enthusiasm on the Republican side, I expected Rossabi to have a better showing with Fentress possibly sneaking in at sixth. Imagine my relief as the latter completely fell off and the former is in fifth place—the Karen Candidate could still make up the votes to claim the final at-large seat, but it’ll be an uphill climb as conservatives outside of West Greensboro could punt to November. As a result, Marikay remains the Blue Lives Matter candidate.

Zack curbstomping Chip in District 3 speaks for itself. 

Meanwhile in District 5, Tammi Thurm is in trouble as her vote total failed to reach 50 percent (she earned 45.4 percent). Motivated conservatives could use former Sheriff BJ Barnes’s enthusiastic support for Wilkins to put the latter back in office.

Going back to the at-large race, Hugh Holston got 11th hour endorsements from some longstanding PACs (Simkins, Replacements Limited). I thought for sure he wouldn’t make it out of the primary due to a lack of name recognition—remember, Wilkins ran the Guilford County GOP, Outling is a member of a high-profile law firm that represents the city, Wells was on City Council from 2005 to 2009—a guy on a committee no one pays attention to was surely not going to advance, right? So much for that, but Holston is in trouble as he starts the next round almost 200 votes behind Tracy Furman for the final seat.

Progressives and creatives had a bad night overall. For the former group, Franca Jalloh simply did not get the votes she needed to be competitive. As for the latter group, Dusty Keene only bested a mostly nonparticipating Taffy Buchanan. And, then there’s the mayor’s race…

…A disgraced judge got more votes than the true outsider, a guy who’s done more creatively for Greensboro than any mover and shaker? I mean, what do you even say? It was one thing to fall to Nancy and Justin since they had everything in their favor, but I have to say that the voters of Greensboro failed Eric Robert.

Whither Marcus Smith! Whither George Floyd! Whither Any Efforts to Overhaul Greensboro Police!

Meanwhile in East Greensboro, the biggest impediments to the 2020 uprisings are well ahead of their second-place challengers. This is where Greensboro Rising failed as the group should have fielded candidates to hold Hightower and Wells accountable for their anti-defund the police copaganda stances. If there’s a demographics issue (i.e., older residents), then, we have our problem right there. If it’s something else, then, these activists will need to find a new way to break decades of paternalism.

Speaking of Marcus Smith being forgotten as a major stain on Greensboro’s reputation, these tweets from WHOA spell out what happened:

The elites who run the Gate City caught a huge break with the city settling with the Smith family. Instead of a major political overhaul, the local races were reshaped in favor of the establishment. 

Consider the following:

1. Smith’s family was legally prohibited from rallying against the eight remaining City Council members (excluding Hugh Holston, but including his predecessor, Michelle Kennedy who's working for the city in another department)

2. A vital issue was eliminated from this election cycle, which meant the powers that be no longer had any reason to be uncomfortable

3. The absence of any groups fighting police brutality in the nine contests enabled three formidable Back the Blue challengers (Rossabi, Fentress, Wilkins) and a fringe fourth one (Marshburn) to join Abuzuaiter in shifting the pendulum in the opposite direction