Mayor Pam Hemminger served Chapel Hill across four terms, and with 2023 election results in after a head-to-head between candidates Adam Searing and Jess Anderson, a new voice represents Chapel Hill as the race is called for Anderson on election night.
Anderson, who built a lead with the early voting totals, won after earning 7,092 votes (58.7 percent) with after all of the precincts finished reporting on Tuesday. Searing, who is a first-term council member, earned nearly 41 percent (4,943 total votes).
Anderson, a professor of practice at UNC and education policy analyst, was first elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2015 and earned election in 2019 with the most votes of any council candidate. With her second four-year term coming to a close and an endorsement from Hemminger — alongside others including congressman David Price and a slate of former Chapel Hill mayors — she positioned herself well for a run at mayor. Her campaign platform of continuing to follow the town’s recent “Complete Communities” framework and sustainable growth strategies also earned support through endorsements from groups like the local Sierra Club, INDY Week, and the action fund of the local advocacy group NEXT. Anderson’s campaign also focused on seeking partnerships with major business players in Orange County to achieve housing goals, as well as prioritizing efforts to reach sustainability benchmarks.
“It’s so exciting, exhausting and slightly overwhelming — but mostly, I’m just really excited and grateful to the people of Chapel Hill,” Anderson said in an interview on Election Night with 97.9 The Hill.
The story of the 2023 mayoral race — and Chapel Hill’s town council election overall — was often a battle between differing progressive liberal ideologies presented by noted local organizations NEXT and Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town (CHALT). Searing’s campaign largely focused on criticizing the way “Complete Communities” was constructed and several recent projects approved by his peers on the council reflecting those priorities. He also pushed for the town to revise its spending strategies and ran on the promise to represent views he maintained are “being ignored” by the current elected officials.
Anderson acknowledged that clear split in ideologies — not just between herself and Searing, but between Chapel Hill residents — and said it will require “one tough conversation at a time” to move forward.
“It does feel like a challenge going forward to figure out how we all come back together again after this really tough campaign,” said the mayor-elect. “But I’m also really happy because I feel like the results show we have a mandate for the work that we have started and we just now need to execute on the promises that we’ve made.
“There’s a lot of work to do on my part as well to make sure that people understand the election is now over,” Anderson added, “and we all have to pivot toward moving Chapel Hill forward and working for the good of this town. I ran on a platform of being a mayor for all, and that is who I will be.”
Searing delivered a concession speech to supporters gathered at Tru Deli in Chapel Hill on Tuesday after Anderson’s lead appeared insurmountable. Since he is two years into a four-year term, he will retain his seat on the Chapel Hill Town Council.
“Where do we go from here,” Searing asked in his campaign newsletter on Wednesday morning. “There’s enormous energy and commitment from so many in town on these issues and that isn’t going anywhere. We are all going to keep working for a better Chapel Hill – it may just take us a little longer to get there.”
With his campaign, Searing endorsed and ran with a slate of four candidates for Chapel Hill Town Council with the goal of bringing more candidates who aligned with his policy goals on the elected body. Of the quartet, only one member appears will ultimately be elected. Amy Ryan, Melissa McCullough and Theodore Nollert were the top vote-earners when the results came in on Tuesday. Elizabeth Sharp and Renuka Soll — both candidates among Searing’s slate — were separated by only 16 votes at the end of the Election Day reporting, with Sharp in the lead. A winner will be finalized once the Orange County Board of Elections tallies any mail-in and provisional ballots in the race and certifies the results.
Anderson will be sworn in as Chapel Hill’s mayor on December 18, alongside other new members to the town council.
Local election results from races in Orange and Chatham County can be found here.
Featured image via Jess Anderson for Mayor/Trevor Holman Photography
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