I doubt they would, alone. But what if our favorite NIMBYs are not the only ones who are bringing out the knives?
Think about it from their perspective: if you think the current council is illegitimate and you wanted to get out the votes, you’d partner with other grassroots organizations that may have felt snubbed or ignored in the past year and a half (since it’d give you more manpower and legitimacy).
For argument’s sake, let’s say Livable Raleigh’s interpretation of recall rules is correct, and random individuals, Livable, and OneWake (the group that grabbed MAB and Kane’s attentions when they organized against Downtown South) team up and evenly split the number of signatures needed. Then, each organization could collect as few as 638 votes and trigger a recall. I don’t think that’s unreasonable…
Click here to see the math.
The last column is how many signatures you’d need for each office:
| Office | ’19 Winner | ’19 Total Votes | ’19 Round 1 Votes | 25% of 3rd Column |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mayor | Baldwin | 54,566 | 38.18% | 13,642 |
| Council, At-Large 1 | Stewart | 91,649 | 33.74% | 22,913 |
| Council, At-Large 2 | Melton | 91,649 | 23.08% | 22,913 |
| Council, District A | Buffkin | 11,845 | 52.65% | 2,962 |
| Council, District B | Cox | 7,654 | 54.13% | 1,914 |
| Council, District C | Branch | 10,409 | 62.96% | 2,603 |
| Council, District D | Martin* | 10,241 | 47.22% | 2,561 |
| Council, District E | Knight | 12,901 | 96.34% | 3,226 |
David Cox won his seat with the fewest votes in thee whole council. He is the most NIMBY of 'em all and would probably survive the election. He could still get recalled, anyways, for the sake of completeness, so let’s just use him as an example. If we go with the assumptions I laid out earlier, that’s 1/3 of 1914, or 638 signatures per organization.
*=Stormie Forte would stand for this contest, instead, for obvious reasons.