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More People Vote, More Progressives Win
A perspective from Tom Jensen
In 2015 CHALT (the Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town) came on the scene with a bang, electing three of its candidates and defeating an incumbent Mayor and two incumbent Town Council members in a town that almost always re-elects its officials.
In 2023 CHALT candidates were pretty much blown out of the water, winning a single seat thanks only to a vote split caused by progressives having 5 candidates for 4 slots.
What happened in between is a story of the town’s progressive majority rising up and greatly expanding the electorate.
In 2015 Pam Hemminger was elected Mayor with a CHALT endorsement and 4,892 votes. This year Adam Searing got 4,943 votes with a CHALT endorsement…and lost by 18 points. The reality is that CHALT has a consistent base largely of older home owners who are always going to vote in municipal elections. It’s a large enough base that they can win low turnout elections. But they have shown a limited ability to grow that base.
Thanks to the efforts of groups like Triangle Blog Blog, Next Chapel Hill-Carrboro, and the hard working campaigns of the candidates themselves turnout this year was more than 30% higher than it was in 2015.
CHALT got the same votes it always does but progressive candidates saw a huge increase in their vote totals because the more infrequent, in many cases first time municipal voters they turned out overwhelmingly voted for progressive slate candidates. That’s why essentially the same number of votes for CHALT went from a 9 point win to an 18 point loss in 8 years.
Of everything that happened in the final stretch of the campaign one thing really stuck with me. There’s a very small sliver of the town of Chapel Hill in Durham County that’s easy to forget about. A friend of mine who lives in it texted me a couple weeks before the election to say that Jess Anderson had been to his house and he’d learned from that visit that he could vote for Mayor of Chapel Hill.
When I heard that I had a feeling that the progressive effort might draw out a lot of people who aren’t off year voting regulars because they were putting in the work on voter education in a way we don’t always see. The proof is in the results.
I do think there is one lesson progressive Chapel Hill organizations should take from CHALT though: do a careful job of candidate recruitment so you have four candidates for four seats.
In 2021 progressives would have swept the Town Council seats…but they only had three candidates. In 2023 progressives would have swept the Town Council seats…but having five candidates led to a split on who people gave their fourth vote to that allowed one CHALT candidate to sneak in.
A couple minor tweaks in strategy would have resulted in a Town Council next year with no CHALT representation at all- it’s something to keep in mind moving forward.
Nevertheless the voters of Chapel Hill sent a pretty clear message Tuesday: they have rejected NIMBY-ism. They have rejected resistance to progress. Since a peak in 2017 CHALT has done gradually worse in each passing election cycle.
Congratulations to all the candidates and groups who made that happen- and a final congratulations to Mayor Pam Hemminger on a great eight year tenure and leaving things in a place where voters overwhelmingly chose candidates who would continue the direction she’s set the town on. Chapel Hillians think we are in a good place.
(featured image: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
