Former NC House Rep. Earl Jones congratulates mayoral candidate Robbie Perkins (left) and campaign manager Ross Harris. (photo by Eric Ginsburg)
The incumbent candidates may have headed into the Oct. 11 primary with confidence, but it is likely only District 2 councilman Jim Kee walked away fully satisfies.
Mayoral hopeful Robbie Perkins led the pack with a decisive lead over incumbent Mayor Bill Knight, with a nearly 3,000-vote spread between the two frontrunners.
As the votes came in, Perkins said he spent much of the rainy day at the G34 precinct near the corner of Holden and Friendly avenues with fellow mayoral candidate Tom Phillips, standing under a portico as voters filed in.
“We’re the only two that’s been around long enough to know that’s the only precinct in town you can stand at without getting wet,” he said.
Tom Phillips placed a distant third, with 11.0 percent of the vote. He and two other candidates, Chris Phillips and Bradford Cone, were eliminated in the primary balloting. As the returns came in, Knight learned from a journalist that Tom Phillips had endorsed Perkins. Perkins, a distance runner who once ran professionally, looked ecstatic as the results came in. “We’re not going to let up,” he told supporters. “We’re going to go straight to the finish line.”
As he watched the disappointing results with supporters, Knight defended a controversial effort to reopen the White Street Landfill.
“Some candidates had not done anything on the landfill,” he said. “We came up with a plan. We were flying blind. There was no active plan. The former mayor had an idea of what to do with the landfill, but it didn’t go anywhere. An RFP was handed to us.
“The problem is we’re spending millions of dollars,” he added. “How can we rectify that? But the problem is still there.”
Both incumbent at-large council members Nancy Vaughan and Danny Thompson survived the primary, but Thompson held on by a shoestring, falling to fifth place behind newcomer Chris Lawyer and perennial at-large challenger Marikay Abuzuaiter, who placed third in the field.
“I am pleased to be this high knowing I ran a grassroots campaign; I have no money,” said Abuzuaiter. “I’ve got a fight on my hands.”
Abuzuaiter reacted in shock at seeing herself in third place based on early-voting returns, but she held on to the spot after all precincts have reported. Two years ago, she was edged out in the general election by Thompson, and two years before that by Mary Rakestraw.
Thompson said his strategy would not change after the results, but that he would continue to knock on doors and make phone calls.
“It’s like the NCAA playoffs, you move on to the next round and another day,” Thompson said.
Vaughan, who got into the race at the 11 th hour, mentioned that she and her husband, NC Sen. Don Vaughan, had planned a trip to Aruba the week before the election back when she thought she wasn’t going to be running. After seeing the close numbers, she said, “I have a feeling the airlines are going to be making some money off of me.”
Vaughan placed second, after Yvonne Johnson, a former mayor. Buoyed by strong turnout in east Greensboro precincts she has drawn from in the past, Johnson led the at-large race with 22.7 percent of the vote, more than 3,000 over Vaughan. Wayne Abraham edged out Cyndy Hayworth by 426 votes to clear the primary, and secure on the six slots on the general-election ballot.
With less than 50 votes difference between them, Nancy Hoffmann and incumbent Mary Rakestraw eliminated third candidate Tony Collins in District 4 race. Hoffmann began the night with a commanding lead from early voting, but as the night wore, but by the time all precincts were reporting she barely maintained her edge.
Incumbent Jim Kee said going into the primary he hoped to walk away with 80 percent of the votes, and he came close to hitting his target. With 72.8 percent of the vote, more than three times as many as challenger and NC A&T University senior C. Bradley Hunt II, who soundly defeated Dan Fischer to continue in the race.
Hunt was counting on A&T students, amongst others, to turn out in strong numbers to support him, but it appears most Aggies on campus stayed home with a mere 47 votes cast at the campus precinct.
“We have to get those numbers up,” Hunt said. “We will.” But overall, voter turnout exceeded expectations in this primary election, with more than 20,000 voters, just above 11 percent of the electorate, coming out on this rainy Tuesday.
“We put the number at 15,000 last night,” Perkins remarked. Nine precincts out of 107 reported more than 20 percent turnout.
Brian Clarey and Jordan Green contributed reporting to this story.
