Raleigh Elections and Council Overall

I’ve not heard of Carmen Cauthen before but based on her application and LinkedIn she looks like a good candidate.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmen-cauthen-38334922

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She went to Georgia Tech and so did my dad so good by me :+1:

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Via Johnathan Meton on Twitter: A virtual forum for District D will take place 3 p.m. tomorrrow, July 12. These candidates will participate:

Carmen Cauthen
Jane Harrison
Jennifer Peeler Truman
Joseph Todd Kennedy
Stormie Forte

Watch:
:tv: RTN 11
:iphone: http://YouTube.com/CityofRaleigh
:computer: http://RaleighNC.gov

Via me: Kay didn’t even make the five finalists. LOL.

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Go Jackets! Industrial Engineering 2008

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This Wolfpacker says , " Congratulations " !!!

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NC State MBA 2019! Wolves eat Bulldogs.

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Stormie won the council seat with a 6 to 1 vote on the first vote count .

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Oh no… is that the one endorsed by Stef Mendell???

David Cox was the only vote for the Liveable Raleigh-endorsed Carmen Cauthen.

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Fully prepared for 6-1 votes for the foreseeable future…
And, LR only ‘endorsed’ someone other than Kay following the Sunday forum.

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Personally, I do not believe the narrative that all development is bad nor do I believe the opposite version that all development is good. I think our municipality should push to be a bit more progressive than the prior council on development while asking to improve standards for rezonings around design, functionality, scale, affordability and evolving density. I do not think we should give ‘free market carte blanche’. It would be great for leadership to seem deliberate not reactive.
Certainly, that is a timely lament in 2020…

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Stormie Forte is a great selection has an excellent resume & includes these historic demographics:
First black woman (unbelievable)
First black LGBTQ
First LGBTQ woman ~

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I watched the interview Sunday & Stormie is very sharp . I was also very impress with her . No Jake , Steff favored Carmen .

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For those of y’all who want more details on her positions but don’t want to put in the work:

How would Forte add to the city's response to COVID?

The councillor-elect wants the City to play a bigger part in COVID responses beyond enforcing rules and handing out masks. She mentioned making the city a bigger part of contact tracing and COVID tests so that people feel more confident about returning to local businesses.

Forte supports 'affordable housing' -but what does that look like?

She also wants to bring “transparency into [the] process” of allocating bond-based funds for affordable housing. What she meant by “transparency” wasn’t clear, but she did say she’s interested in putting more of a spotlight on low-income housing and workforce housing (e.g. firefighters, teachers), as well as bringing rental units up to “a more livable state” and increasing first-time homeownership.

She’s also passionate about helping women- and minority-owned businesses being a competitive option for city-commissioned work such as public housing.

Between these positions and her push for improved public transit and careful business re-activation, it’s clear that she’s not anti-development. But her views are also more nuanced than just saying she’s “pro-building-more-cool-stuff” (but then again, when was the world ever that black-and-white?).

About that vision of improved public transit...

Forte also supports the idea of more frequent, organized public transit. She lamented how GoRaleigh’s “really large city buses that […] are practically empty”, and wants to make buses a more compelling alternative to driving. She suggested “bringing in smaller buses that run as feeders [for] large buses” and “see how we can make [our buses] more efficient […] so that there’s not as much of a wait time” as a start -though I got a general impression she hasn’t been following the Wake Transit Plan too closely.

She also has interesting ideas about police accountability in Raleigh.

Forte also wants to take advantage of her experience as a criminal defense attorney to establish an ombudsman’s office. Ombudsmen’s offices let police officers (and other city employees) have an anonymous, confidential way to report and investigate misconduct issues like police misconduct and violence. Forte has personal experience being an ombud, so she sounds like she knows the best practices for putting this into practice.

She’s also interested in granting the Police Oversight Board subpoena powers for police misconduct investigations, but understands that she’d have to work with the City Attorney and General Assembly representatives. Forte is keen on bringing out the big guns for police reform, but she cautioned that “it’s not one of those things I want to say ‘yes, absolutely, this is what we’re going to do’”. She has a sense of what the City can do and where she knows she’d have to work with state officials. “We don’t want to get people’s hopes up, and overpromise and underdeliver.”

Her vision for the future of Raleigh is really concise, salient, yet sexy:

I’m glad the Council picked her, too, since it sounds to me like she knows how to find the right perspectives to make that happen.

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I don’t know much about her, but I really like the name of her talk show. “The Art of Listening”. Listening is a very important skill that many put on the back burner.

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Stormie Forte is gonna be a great bridge builder between the haves and have nots in Raleigh she will bring alot of the pieces you see broken in Raleigh together however some will always be renegades or to be fair just always unhappy and will never work with the Council we have now.

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I wonder why she didn’t run last fall?

Thanks y’all, I had my names screwed up. She sounds fantastic!!!

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None of that matters to me at all nor should it matter to anyone.

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It’s called representation. Black residents make up 27-29% of Raleigh’s population (that’s nearly a third), yet there was (until now) one black person on the council (the rest white, so there’s still not much representation for any other ethnicity/race). And I don’t think I need to explain male vs female representation in government, historically.

So, sure- policy and experience are most important, but it seems she’s on the ball with that. As for representation not mattering to “anyone” …? Ask a black person how they feel about representation in government. It matters to people. Just because it doesn’t matter to you, doesn’t mean it “shouldn’t matter to anyone.”

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