Click for election results in Apex, Cary, and Morrisville.
Four Wake County municipalities will see new mayors sworn in after unofficial election results are certified by the state board of elections later this month.
In Fuquay-Varina, Holly Springs, Wake Forest, and Zebulon, four sitting mayors lost their seats, most to challengers from their own town council or boards of commissioners. And though the contests are all officially nonpartisan, Democratic candidates dominated across the board.
Fuquay-Varina
In Fuquay-Varina, developer and two-term incumbent Blake Massengill, a Republican, lost to Bill Harris, a Democrat who grew up in Fuquay-Varina and has served on the town’s board of commissioners since 1987. Harris won with 57 percent of the vote to Massengill’s 43 percent.
This isn’t the first time the two have gone head-to-head. Following a bitter debate over policing that erupted in the town after the murder of George Floyd, and the arrest of a local teenager falsely accused of stealing a dirt bike, many of the town’s residents hoped that its leadership would move in a different direction following the retirement of the town’s longtime mayor, paving the way for the first matchup between Harris and Massengill in 2021.
Massengill won the mayor’s seat by nine percentage points that year. The board of commissioners, under his leadership, continued to disappoint some residents, who had hoped to see an assessment of the town’s staff and operations taken under consideration by the board of commissioners. Massengill declined to review it. He was reelected in 2023 after running unopposed.
Along with Harris, who retired from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services in 2020 and worked as an adjunct professor at Shaw University, Bryan Haynes and Kristopher Vorren won two seats on the town’s board of commissioners out of a pool of four candidates, taking about 41 and 29 percent of the vote, respectively. Haynes is a first-term incumbent; Vorren is a newcomer to politics.
Holly Springs
In Holly Springs, Mike Kondratick, a Democrat, unseated one-term mayor Sean Mayefskie, a Republican. Kondratick, a public affairs professional and small business owner, won 56 percent of the vote to Mayefskie’s 44 percent.
While Holly Springs has seen an economic boom in the last four years under building materials entrepreneur Mayefskie’s leadership, with the recruitment of several life sciences companies including Amgen, Genentech, and FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, town leaders have faced criticism from the community over its perceived treatment of the town’s queer residents. The town never adopted Wake County’s 2021 nondiscrimination ordinance, and in 2023, it issued a Pride proclamation that failed to make any mention of the LGBTQ community.
In the town council races, candidates endorsed by the Wake Democrats swept a pool of six candidates for three seats, ousting conservative incumbent town council member Tim Forrest.
The races were close, but incumbent town council member Annie Drees, an electrical engineer, placed first with about 20 percent of the vote. Political newcomer Sarah Larson, a social media manager, executive director, and event coordinator, placed second, winning about 19 percent of the vote. And Kara Foster, an optometrist, placed third with about 19 percent of the vote.
Here’s how those votes shook out:
Wake Forest
One of the biggest upsets of a sitting mayor last night came in the northern Wake County town of Wake Forest, where longtime mayor Vivian Jones was defeated by sitting town commissioner Ben Clapsaddle. Clapsaddle took a staggering 71 percent of the vote to Jones’s 29 percent. It’s all the more notable given that Jones, who is unaffiliated, has served in the mayor’s seat since she was elected in 2001. Clapsaddle was endorsed by the Wake Democrats.
Jones may have sealed the deal on her defeat back in September, when she introduced, then walked back, a proclamation intended to recognize the LGBTQ community during the month of October, when Wake Forest celebrates Pride. Backlash from local residents was swift, and public records later revealed that Jones retracted the proclamation after leaders of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of Wake Forest’s most powerful institutions and a partner with the town on various development projects, urged her to do so.
In the two decades that Jones has served in the top seat, Wake Forest has grown by more than 300 percent and a study recently found that Wake Forest is the number one suburb in the country that people are moving to. Clapsaddle, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former division chief at Fort Bragg, ran a campaign focused on this growth and says he wants to prioritize fair budgeting, improving the town’s infrastructure, and advocating for all of the town’s residents.
Wake County Democrats-endorsed candidates also won two open seats on Wake Forest’s board of commissioners, ousting one incumbent, Nick Sliwinski, who placed fourth. Haseeb Fatmi, a newcomer to town politics who attended Wake County Public Schools and is an attorney at Ogletree Deakins, won the most votes, 5,537, or 27 percent of the vote share. Incumbent commissioner Keith Shackleford came in second, winning a second term with 5,221 votes, or 26 percent of the vote share.
Fatmi says he wants to create a walkable Wake Forest by focusing on infrastructure and a safe, accessible, equitable, and affordable community. Shackleford, an attorney and the current mayor pro tem, wants to address sprawl and deforestation and prioritize affordable housing and balancing the town’s policies and plans with the diverse voices of the community.
Here are the results for Wake Forest’s board of commissioners:
Zebulon
Finally, the small but growing eastern Wake County town of Zebulon—where incumbent mayor Glenn York placed second to last out of five candidates—saw the messiest mayoral contest in this municipal election cycle by far. Sitting commissioner and current mayor pro tem Jessica Daniels Harrison won the seat last night with about 34 percent of the vote, but it was a victory few could have predicted.
The trouble started for York last year following the resignation of one town manager, the controversial appointment of another on an interim basis, and a lawsuit against the town brought by a developer. The town’s board of commissioners appointed eventual mayoral candidate Gilbert Todd to the permanent town manager’s position in December, but Todd resigned four months later, followed by the assistant town manager. The town council brought back their scandal-plagued interim town manager who still serves in the role. A commissioner resigned soon after (her seat still hasn’t been filled), and residents launched a petition to remove the mayor and all sitting commissioners.
In the five-way race, York, the embattled incumbent, won 57 votes, or 3 percent of the vote share. Todd came in second after Harrison, taking 32 percent of the vote, followed by Republican former commissioner Larry Loucks (28 percent), York, and then Shannon Baxter, another sitting commissioner, who won about 2.5 percent of the vote share.
The Wake Democrats endorsed Harrison, the director of operations for the nonprofit CORRAL Riding Academy, and incumbent commissioner Quentin Miles, a Marine Corps veteran, who won one of two open seats on the board with 29 percent of the vote. The other winner was Republican George Roa, a realtor and Zebulon planning board member, who won 22 percent of the vote, edging out Democratic-endorsed candidate Davarus Gardner by just 25 votes.
Here are those results:
Wendell
In the fast-growing town in eastern Wake County that’s proving popular with young people for its quaint appeal coupled with affordability, we learned that being a rock star, literally, does not necessarily a town commissioner make.
Here again, Wake County Democratic Party-endorsed candidates won their races, with endorsees Dustin Ingalls and incumbent Deans Eatman placing first and second for three open seats, taking about 20 percent and 19 percent of the vote, respectively.
Aesthetics brand manager Kate Benson came in third, taking about 17 percent of the vote share, eking out a narrow win over American Aquarium rocker BJ Barham, who won 129 fewer votes than Benson (or 15 percent overall).
It will be interesting to see how this new cohort governs together as Wendell works to balance its explosive growth—it is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the nation—with its big small-town charm. Ingalls, the director of political programs at the Environmental Defense Fund and a former political consultant, embraces Wendell’s growth, as does Eatman, a town commissioner since he was elected in 2021 and works as the director of legislative affairs and an adviser to the secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Benson, who is unaffiliated and ran on a slate with Barham and Republican Philip Tarnaski, is generally more growth skeptical. Her platform emphasized “responsible growth that honors our roots,” as she put it on her campaign website.
Here are the results for Wendell’s board of commissioners:
Garner
In this six-way race for two council seats, Wake County Democratic Party endorsees again came out on top. Incumbent Gra Singleton, who has served on the council since 1993, won the most votes, more than 33.3 percent. Political newcomer Kelvin Stallings, the director of community engagement at NC CHILD and a former legislative aide at the General Assembly, came in second with 32.4 percent of the vote share. Kathy Behringer, who has served on Garner’s town council for 20 years, placed fourth behind former Garner deputy police chief Mike McIver.
Here are the results for the Garner Town Council:
Knightdale
In this relatively low-turnout election for three open seats, Knightdale voters will see two familiar faces back on the town council, and one new one.
Political newcomer Grady Bussey, a community engagement analyst for the City of Raleigh, won the most votes and about 25.5 percent of the vote share. Latatious Morris, who has worked in property management and administrative leadership, won her first election after she was appointed to the council in 2021 (when then-council member Jessica Day was appointed mayor). Morris won about 23.5 percent of votes. First-term incumbent and current mayor pro tem Steve Evans was also reelected, winning 21 percent of the vote share.
Here are the Knightdale Town Council election results:
Rolesville
In Rolesville’s noncompetitive election for three seats on the town’s board of commissioners, voters still showed up. Their favorite candidate was local boutique owner Jennifer Bernat, who won 29 percent of votes, followed by incumbent financial coach Dan Alston (26 percent) and mayor pro tem April Sneed (24 percent), who is also a financial services professional. Write-in candidates won 697 votes, a full 22 percent of the vote share.
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