Something remarkable happened in Charlotte yesterday. As returns rolled in on the mayoral and city council primary elections, a wave of upsets emerged.
Two City Council incumbents were defeated in their re-election bids in the Democratic primary Tuesday. Patsy Kinsey lost the District 1 seat she has held for 12 years, and three-term council member Claire Fallon was outside of the top four in the at-large race.
Kinsey and Fallon’s losses will usher in massive change for the council, which will start its new term in December with at least five new members out of 11. There also will be a new mayor, as incumbent Jennifer Roberts lost to Mayor Pro Tem Vi Lyles in the Democratic primary.
The Queen City awoke to the stunning news that the embattled Roberts was defeated by Vi Lyles, who is now Charlotte's first African American woman to be nominated for Mayor. Jeff Singer's recent diary has a good analysis of the mayoral race, but there’s another important angle to this story. When the 8% (yes, eight) of voters who turned out had our say on City Council, the clear winner was the Millenial generation.
Over a dozen candidates under age 40 filed as candidates for the 2017 City Council election. Creative Loafing Charlotte did a profile of nine of them in June, opening with this:
It's hard to get a grasp on the facts when it comes to politics these days, but one thing's for certain: the youth are getting restless.
Whether violently shaken from apathy by the election of President Donald Trump and his administration's enactment of ridiculous policies, stirred by the stubborn refusal of the North Carolina legislature to admit the catastrophe that was House Bill 2, or spurred to action by the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott and the city's response, the last two years have seen young people in Charlotte standing up against injustice on a city, state and national level.
Democrats Larkin Egleston (34) and Justin Harlow (28), profiled in the link, both won their districts. Activist Braxton Winston II (34) and outspoken Trump critic Dimple Ajmera (31) took two of the top four at-large seats on the November ballot. Republican Tariq Scott Bokhari (34) also won his district by more than six points.
Defeated incumbents Patsy Kinsey and Claire Fallon are 76 and 83 respectively. Both are dedicated public servants, but the voters have spoken and a changing of the guard is at hand.
We have a lot of work to do. City wide turnout was 8% and my precinct was 0.3% at lunch time. Still, I'm encouraged to see a new generation of Charlotte progressives engaged in government and look forward to supporting them through November.