Morrisville mayor TJ Cawley gaveled the September 9 town council meeting into session at precisely 6 p.m. Situated in the middle seat behind a long, curved dais, he wore a Town of Morrisville-branded shirt, nametag, and enamel pin. At his elbow sat a town-branded water bottle. Directly behind him hung the town’s flag. He opened the meeting with a few celebratory remarks about Morrisville’s new dog park.
“When we as a council and a town team listen to our residents and focus on a vision to enhance our community, there is truly nothing we cannot accomplish together,” Cawley declared.
To his right sat council members Liz Johnson, Vicki Scroggins-Johnson, and Donna Fender. To his left, mayor pro tempore Satish Garimella and council members Steve Rao and Anne Robotti.
There will soon be some new faces behind the dais following Morrisville’s municipal election this fall. Fender and Rao are not seeking reelection. Scroggins-Johnson is running for reelection this year and has one challenger. Cawley, too, is running to keep his seat. His opponents include conservative first-time candidate Richard Reinhart and Garimella, Cawley’s mayor pro tem.
That Garimella, who’s in his tenth year on the council, is challenging Cawley, a fellow Democrat and the mayor since 2017, suggests some level of disagreement about how the town’s most visible leader and spokesperson should be operating. Even more striking, the majority of their colleagues—Johnson, Scroggins-Johnson, and Rao—have endorsed Garimella over Cawley for the town’s top job. (Fender and Robotti did not respond to INDY’s questions about who they are supporting.)
“Morrisville residents, Morrisville council members, and especially Morrisville staff need a mayor who is honest, transparent, and a consensus builder, who can bring Morrisville successfully into the future,” Johnson (who herself ran against Cawley in 2021 and lost by fewer than 600 votes) wrote in an email to the INDY. “It will be refreshing to once again have a Mayor with the leadership skills and the compassion to represent and incorporate all our residents in his decision making.”
“Morrisville deserves a stronger advocate for our town and our road projects,” Scroggins-Johnson wrote in an email. “That person is Satish Garimella.”
Scroggins-Johnson says millions of dollars’ worth of improvements to main roads including NC-54, Airport Boulevard and Aviation Parkway have been delayed and still aren’t complete, even though they were approved when Cawley took office in 2017. Scroggins-Johnson blames Cawley, who represents Morrisville on the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), the regional board that allocates the funding.
Despite his colleagues’ criticisms, Cawley secured the Wake County Democratic Party’s endorsement this year. But the dividing lines on Morrisville’s all-Democrat town council aren’t partisan. As Johnson’s and Scroggins-Johnson’s comments suggest, they have more to do with how the town should be managing its growth and showing up on the regional stage.
Who’s running and why?
Cawley was elected mayor in 2017 after one term as a council member, unseating Republican mayor Mark Stohlman. Although the job is technically part-time, Cawley calls himself a “full time mayor.” He used to work in finance, but has spent the last 20 years as a stay-at-home dad and community volunteer. Cawley is ever-present around town—speaking at events, hosting office hours in coffee shops, and snapping selfies with residents while wearing various articles of Morrisville-branded clothing. He’s a big advocate for preserving parks and green spaces, improving sidewalks, and expanding Morrisville’s police and fire departments to keep up with population growth.
When the town council votes on contentious rezoning and planning decisions, Cawley tends to side with the minority of members who are wary of adding more housing density in the form of apartments and townhomes. In an interview with INDY, he says he believes Morrisville has “already done a lot of what I think is our share [for Wake County] by creating more density.”
It’s true that Morrisville is fairly dense, with 30,000 residents living on 10 square miles sandwiched between Cary and RDU International Airport. However, housing affordability is a persistent issue. The town’s 2017 Affordable Housing Plan found that although the median family income was high compared to the region at $111,000, there was a shortage of housing options available for people earning below it. The report identified public employees like teachers and first responders among the cohort who earn well below the median income and may not be able to rent or buy a home in Morrisville. The median home sale price there is $629,000, according to Redfin.
When it comes to approving new developments, Cawley prefers ownership units over rentals, which typically means houses rather than apartments. “I’m very much in favor of trying to do everything we can to help people own so that they can build generational wealth,” he says.
Garimella approaches the housing debate a little differently—he’s made “housing for everyone” a major campaign theme.
“For certain people, apartment is a curse word,” Garimella adds. Not for him—in part, he says, because he grew up in Bombay, India, which is orders of magnitude bigger and denser than Morrisville. He’s comfortable adding more dense housing types near transit corridors and other places where it makes sense, and he speaks about how Morrisville has become unlivable for a swath of low- and medium-earners.
Garimella has been on council since 2015 and became mayor pro tem two years ago. A senior product manager at GSK, his first foray into Morrisville politics came when his neighborhood homeowners’ association cited him for growing tropical plants in his garden. Frustrated by the HOA’s arbitrary rules, he ran for president of the organization and won. Later, he decided to run for town council after successfully lobbying the body to approve a new park in his neighborhood. If elected, he’d be the first Indian American mayor of Morrisville, which has a large Indian and South Asian population.
Reinhart, the third candidate, is a paralegal who’s lived in Morrisville since 2013. His previous political experience includes volunteering for the Trump campaign in 2016, 2020, and 2024. He’s running on a platform of frugal budgeting and preventing tax increases. (Morrisville has not increased its local tax rate in five years, although property values rose countywide in 2024).
Reinhart says the current town council has “hyper-developed” Morrisville and he would reverse course.
“I’d rather have single-family residences [versus medium- and high-density development],” he says. He says he likes that the plans for Morrisville’s new town center include space for small businesses, but doesn’t support the inclusion of apartments in the mixed-use development there.
Opponents and colleagues
The candidates speak about each other respectfully, but it’s clear they have different leadership styles.
Cawley tells INDY that “if voters believe we both add value and represent important perspectives, you don’t have to choose between us. You can keep both by reelecting me as mayor,” in which case Garimella would finish out his council term which ends in 2027.
Cawley pushes back against his critics, noting that Morrisville completed an important road widening project on Morrisville Carpenter Road during his tenure and secured funding to widen another main artery, NC 54. He pointed to Morrisville’s 2021 All-America City award from the National Civic League as evidence that the town is equitable and resilient.
“Despite not always agreeing on everything, we have accomplished a lot as a team, and I’m proud of that,” Cawley says.
He adds that he is “proud to deliver results for Morrisville families, not collect titles that don’t add voting power or improve outcomes.”
That could be a dig at Garimella’s membership on several local boards and commissions, including the North Carolina League of Municipalities board, the NC IT strategy board, the WakeMed board of directors, the Wake Fire Commission; the list goes on. But where Cawley seems to suggest that Garimella’s “titles” aren’t driving results, Garimella says he’s cultivated valuable relationships with regional and state leaders. Case in point: he mentions that he befriended CAMPO’s vice-chair, Butch Lawter, during a UNC School of Government course they completed together.
“He’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat, but … we are like this,” he says, interlacing his fingers, “because we spent 10 days together.”
That connection could come in handy in lobbying CAMPO to fund those road improvements that have been delayed.
“We’ve had a lot of funding opportunities, but it’s competitive. If you snooze you lose,” Garimella says. “You have to be a squeaky wheel.”
Garimella says it’s not personal.
“My race is not against TJ, it is about what is good for Morrisville,” he says. But he also brought up moments when he felt Cawley could have done more for the town. For example, Pathway Triangle, a new manufacturing campus on McKrimmon Parkway, is struggling to attract commercial tenants in part because of limiting language in the town’s unified development ordinance.
Garimella recalls visiting the site and asking the property managers, “‘Did you talk to the mayor?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, he came, he saw, he took a picture, and he left.’ For me, those are opportunities that we lost.”
Early voting in Morrisville and the rest of Wake County begins October 16. Election Day is November 4.
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a Report for America corps member. Follow her on Bluesky or reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].