The NC State Board of Elections offers sample ballots. To get one go here: https://www.ncsbe.gov/voting/sample-ballot
You provide your full name, DOB, and county. You’ll get a sample ballot with all the races, candidates, and referendums that will appear on your actual ballot. Do your research ahead of time and you’ll be prepared when you vote.
My little brother sent me this today as it’s been making the rounds online. I think MAB is doing a fine job and don’t endorse this. I’ve never heard of this ‘activate NC’ group either.
I saw a mention of this on Twitter. RL is dirty and desperate, no doubt.
And here’s Wake Dems defending themselves. Didn’t even bother to tag Livable Raleigh.
Care to utilize your Twitter account access to push back on them a bit? They state: “There have been complaints, public statements, and accusations of a coordinated effort between WCDP and Livable Raleigh, a separate entity that is not affiliated with WCDP.”
but I’d be inclined to reply to that tweet with something to the effect of: “Yet, your organization endorsed the candidate that Livable Raleigh is pushing. Hold them accountable or you are just part of this problem”
He meant “imposing”???
Well… either way, it’s a ridiculous statement 
Indy Week’s city council endorsements are out today. They declined to endorse anyone for mayor.
Anyone have recommendations for District B?
I read this as; they are fine with MAB and understand she is legitimately the best candidate (experience, policy, successful actions in first term) but understand she is divisive (pandemic/protest handling, vape pen “controversy”) and simply don’t want the smoke from their largely left leaning/progressive readers. In other words, they def don’t endorse Ruth because they know he’s a NIMBY and not the best direction a wildly growing city to take, but won’t own up to their previous endorsement of MAB.
IndyWeek has become a rag. I used to actively read it, but all it’s good for now is to tell me who not to vote for in local elections and what new buildings I should be excited about because they hate them.
I like to see continued acknowledgement that CACs were antiquated.
CACs in their former iteration had their manifest problems, and maybe they did need to go.
Their summary on mayor:
If trust in public officials and open lines of communication are the values that are most important to you, vote for Ruth. But if experience, a record of achievements, a knowledge of government, and preserving the city’s forward momentum is your draw, vote for Baldwin.
UGH, they endorse both Jenn and Jane for D. Grrrr
JENN TRUMAN PLEASE!
And they do endorse YES for the parks bond. 
Yup, super sensationalist, anti-everything tabloid at this point
Agreed that CACs were antiquated, but they were a way for residents to communicate with local government. Taking them away without a plan to increase communication was a big mistake, IMO.
uhhhhhh, yeah… yeah that’s kinda exactly the job of Raleigh city mayor LMAO. Also funny to me that “trust in public officials and open lines of communication” are values that would steer someone to Ruth… HOW SO?? He isn’t a public official as of now, so how do we know we can “trust” him as a public official? Because his name is “T.Ruth”??? Open lines of communication - how do we know he’ll actually do this when, again, he has zero history as a public official to back this up?
Taking [CACs] away without a plan to increase communication was a big mistake, IMO.
I agree, I think criticism of the optics is warranted. I also think council should’ve been more proactive in communicating what they were aiming to do instead; it would’ve gone a long way in decreasing the amount of flack they got. But I think Melton gave a great response to this in his Indy questionnaire.
How we send/receive information has changed substantially from the 1970s when CACs were created, and we have to do things differently. Surveys showed few Raleigh residents knew what a CAC was and fewer ever attended a CAC meeting. Attendees were not necessarily representative of the overall community. That can’t be the sole form of city-sanctioned engagement. We need to decentralize. In person meetings are important and will continue to play a role. Groups called CACs still exist and meet, and the city offers a neighborhood registry program where neighborhood groups can register to get access to staff resources and community centers for meetings. But we must take steps to engage with a more diverse, representative community and provide greater access. During this term, we added two required neighborhood meetings for most rezoning cases to our city code. We included renters in all mailed and posted notices for city issues for the first time (rezonings, street projects, etc.). We eliminated the rule that you had to sign up two weeks in advance to speak at City Council meetings and the rule that prohibited speakers from addressing Council Members directly. We funded a Community Engagement Bus to go into traditionally disengaged communities and meet people where they are. And we created the new Office of Community Engagement to help embed engagement in all city departments. For a long time I think community engagement in Raleigh was a noun, a place you had to go to engage. It should be a verb, an action embedded in all of our processes and continuously worked on for improvement.
If anything, this was a PR mistake. Perception matters, and obviously if they had this to do over again, they would…hindsight being 20/20 and realizing this would blow up to a larger talking point. Melton essentially said as much on here, too.
But I would disagree that ending city funding/support for CACs was a mistake. It let a very small minority of unelected people have an outsized influence on city issues, and these same people had and still have plenty of options to make their opinions known. Also, they are still free to organize, gather, and complain. But their official influence has been reduced, which I think is a positive thing.
Welcome to the blog and thanks for the share!
IMO, the summary at the end making the argument that NIMBYism could lead to more republican votes in future is a bad take.
Good urbanism and zoning deregulation should not be partisan because it doesn’t overlay neatly atop typical partisan division lines. Libertarians and conservatives can find common ground with liberal urbanists over zoning deregulation because they don’t want the government restricting their property rights.
Entrenched, wealthy dems and repubs find common ground on NIMBY ideals because they both live amongst NeIgHbOrHoOd ChArAcTeR they don’t want to open up to change.
Finally, incremental development can simultaneously create richer tax base per acre by thickening up neighborhoods, which is a fiscal conservative ideal, while providing more housing and social service opportunities for citizens in the communities that they live in.
Anyways, everything is so partisan these days… It’s been refreshing to realize that urbanism is a dire important topic that technically is non-partisan.
Voting today…anyone have a recommendation for District B?
