After ten days of results too close to call, Elizabeth Sharp is the winner of the final Chapel Hill Town Council seat in 2023 after the certified counts.
The Orange and Durham County boards of elections each met on Thursday to approve and tally any remaining absentee ballots and provisional ballots, with the results certified on Friday. Ultimately, Sharp won by six votes over the candidate closest to her total, Renuka Soll.
“I feel ready and excited to get into the work of serving my town,” Sharp told Chapelboro following the results becoming official. “The most important thing that I feel is [I am] incredibly grateful to Renuka Soll for being a gracious, smart, thoughtful, talented, dedicated running mate and candidate. I would have been so thrilled for her to serve on town council as well, and I’m sad I don’t get to serve beside her, but I could not wish for a better person to have gone through these last ten days of uncertainty with.”
Sharp, a co-owner of two restaurants in Chapel Hill, held a 16-vote by the end of Election Night over Soll, a literacy tutor and chair of the town’s parks, recreation, and greenways commission. The pair made up half of a slate running together for Chapel Hill Town Council this fall, with David Adams and Breckany Eckhardt being the other two. The four candidates were endorsed by current town council member Adam Searing, who campaigned for Chapel Hill mayor but lost to Jess Anderson on Election Night.
After saying on Election Night that she would wait for the certified results before deciding what to do, Soll shared an email with supporters and a statement on social media Friday saying she would not be seeking a recount of the vote totals.
“Elizabeth will bring a much needed perspective to the Council,” she wrote. “Our town will benefit with having her in this role. It was an intense mayor and council race, and it’s now time for the community to come together to work toward a better Chapel Hill.
“It’s hard to lose twice,” Soll added, “and I am ready to move on to something else. I will always be grateful for all that you have done for me.”
The Boards of Elections’ counts on Thursday were remaining mail-in ballots postmarked for Election Day and received by November 10, as well as provisional ballots that needed reviewing in order to be accepted or rejected. In Orange County, the board approved 94 of 128 total supplemental absentee ballots as well as 25 of 63 provisional ballots.
In those ballots added to Orange County’s totals on Thursday night, Soll gained nine more votes than Sharp — which was reflective of her success in Orange County. Soll had 14 more votes than Sharp in the county coming into Thursday, but Sharp’s lead in the overall race was boosted by 30 more votes than Soll in Durham County, where there are a few hundred Chapel Hill voters. In the Durham results certified on Friday, Soll gained one net vote compared to Sharp’s total.
While the final votes were needed to officially confirm the winner of one seat, the other three seats available in the Chapel Hill Town Council race were decided on Election Night. Incumbent Amy Ryan, as well as first-time candidates Melissa McCullough and Theodore Nollert, each earned enough votes to be declared winners to four-year terms on the elected body.
The Chapel Hill municipal races were defined by not only differences in policy between candidates, but also divisiveness stoked by some candidates and strong supporters of their campaigns. Sharp said since hitting the campaign trail this year, she realizes that the town’s residents largely hold the same vision for the town — but just have different preferences for how to get there.
“I think there’s a lot of hope that because the end result we’re all trying to achieve is so similar,” she said, “that if we can find ways to communicate effectively, we can work through those differences and nuance to achieve those ultimate goals.”
The race’s slim margin represents the latest chapter of tight races in Orange County. Four years ago, Tai Huynh defeated incumbent Nancy Oates by 24 votes in the Chapel Hill Town Council election. In 2020, Mark Dorosin defeated Penny Rich by a margin of nine votes for one of the two District 1 seats on the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
Since it is a cross-county race, there will be an additional canvass done by the North Carolina Board of Elections to confirm the county-certified totals. If the results hold, Sharp will be sworn in to join the Chapel Hill Town Council with McCullough, Nollert and Ryan during an organizing meeting on Wednesday, December 18.
Local election results from races in Orange and Chatham County can be found here.
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