If you’ve been having trouble sleeping, perhaps the peace and quiet of Orange County’s fall municipal elections can help put you down for a little nap. Besides Chapel Hill’s town council election (in which six candidates are vying for four seats), most races are uncontested or feature an incumbent against an unknown challenger.
Carrboro mayor Barbara Foushee looks likely to claim a second term over challenger Joe H. Lloyd, Jr, who is making what appears to be his first run for office. Lloyd does not appear to have a campaign website and did not yet respond to an email from INDY seeking more information about his platform.
Mayor pro-tem Danny Nowell will hold his seat on the Carrboro town council, as will Cristóbal Palmer, who will earn a first full term after winning a special election last year.
“While the past week responding to Tropical Storm Chantal has made it difficult to think in terms of campaigning, it has put a spotlight on the cohesion, compassion, and resilience that makes this such a wonderful town to serve,” said Nowell in a press release.
Veteran council member Randee-Haven O’Donnell, who was first elected in 2005, announced this year that she would not run for a fifth term. That leaves an open seat for Fred Joiner, the town’s poet laureate from 2019-2021, who is working on a campaign website but suggests preordering his upcoming collection The Mirror in Our Music in the meantime.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board of education gets a lot of attention around town—no one is too thrilled with the district’s reduction in force, non-renewal of some teacher contracts, and spending that left even the county commission chair “concerned about the school board’s decisions”—but by the time the filing deadline rolled around this year, few challengers stepped up.
Four candidates will compete for the three open seats. Incumbents George Griffin and Riza Jenkins will hold the advantage over challengers Lynnee Argabright and Melinda Manning, who are each seeking a first term and don’t appear to have campaign sites.
No new faces will grace the Hillsborough board of commissioners. Hillsborough mayor Mark Bell is uncontested in his bid for a second term as mayor, and current commissioners Robb English and Kathleen Ferguson did not draw any challengers.
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].