Greensboro District 3

Incumbent: Zack Matheny

Challengers: April Parker, Mr. Mohamed Bashir

Matheny is one of the gatekeepers of the local arts scene due to his position as DGI Chairman, and it's that position that makes him worse than Nancy Hoffmann or Tony Wilkins. 

Hoffmann was born the same year as the late Yvonne Johnson and ex-POTUS Joe Biden, so when Millennials yelled those "OK, Boomer" quips six years ago, that meant that she was too old to even be a Baby Boomer (when people said she was generationally challenged to relate to the youth, this is what they meant). 

As for Wilkins, he was open with his hostility towards creatives during his five-year span on City Council. Zack, on the other hand, is basically helping to mold artists to be more establishment friendly.

His arrogance aside, Matheny is now under SBI investigation, so we may be dealing with an actual crook in office. I mean, there are so many reasons why he needs to go.

Mr. Bashir seems to be doing little than occupying space.

Parker is the only viable candidate to end "business as usual." She has proven chops running the Juneteenth Food Truck Festival and Elsewhere Museum before that.

Greensboro District 4

Candidates: Nicky Smith, Adam Marshall, Steve Ignac

Nancy Hoffmann is retiring after 14 years.

Smith talks about a "more business-friendly council" which reminds me of Roy Carroll saying the same thing a decade ago, and Smith's alignment with the controversial David Wray tells me all I need to know about his positions on policing--making it a hard pass in terms of an endorsement.

Marshall represents all of the worst aspects of being an establishment Democrat--HOA attorney, backed by the lame duck, endorsed by the Greensboro Police Officers Association. 

Ignac is a vehicle technology specialist at Honda and would be much better than either frontrunner.

The REAL State of the Gate City

Synopsis

Things are worse than you think. While there will be some turnover on City Council at a rate not seen since 2009, there are just as many rethreads running.

Greensboro's movers and shakers are busy trying to turn downtown into a gated community, and they also contain gatekeepers who have infiltrated the arts scene. By infiltrate, I mean that they determine which artists get to shine and which artists are shut out.

The city responded to the homeless crisis by attempting to outlaw mutual aid and vastly restrict WHOA from feeding the homeless downtown.

An Inattentive Public

Bloggers and writers alike have pointed out how most of Greensboro’s population pays little attention to City elections. I can count on one hand how many times residents have cared about local issues:

1. The 2018 gun show fiasco that propelled Mark Robinson to national prominence
2. The George Floyd protests, which had some input from local artists
3. The entire Marcus Smith saga
4. Dueling sides at City Hall in June 2023 after a firefighter was fired for bigoted Facebook comments

Half of these involve the ex-lieutenant governor—and arguably, all of them have national inclinations. Even other significant local issues since the GPD scandals of the late 2000s have only gotten the public’s attention if there’s some kind of a link to a state or national issue.

At a recent candidate forum, the moderator brought up a hypothetical scenario of Trump sending troops to the city. On one hand, it came out of nowhere to the point of being irrelevant. On the other hand, the idea of D.C. interfering in everyday Greensboro life being a possible motivator for voters in a year that most candidates represent various shades of the status quo says a lot about the batch of people running in the first place--which is to say, negatively.