To reflect on the year, Chapelboro.com is re-publishing some of the top stories that impacted and defined our community’s experience in 2025. These stories and topics affected Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the rest of our region.
Chapel Hill is known for being a politically active community, but the 2025 municipal election cycle was an unusually sleepy one, with very few contested races and very little disagreement among the candidates. There was a lot more contention next door in Pittsboro and Durham, though – not to mention high-profile developments on the state level – and back in Orange County, the groundwork has already been laid for a very busy 2026.
Off-year local elections rarely draw much attention in most communities, but ours is usually an exception. Not so this year, though: there were a lot of important seats up for grabs, but with very few candidates throwing their hats in the ring, Orange County saw almost no contested races. Uncharacteristically for an odd year, the biggest election-related stories were on the state level: a months-long legal battle over a State Supreme Court seat, which Democrat Allison Riggs finally won after judges rebuffed a Republican attempt to throw out tens of thousands of votes on a technicality, and another GOP effort (this one successful) to redraw the state’s Congressional district lines to give themselves even more of a built-in advantage than they’d already given themselves in 2024.
Here in Chapel Hill, the highest-profile contest ended before it even began. The 2025 election cycle started with cannabis lobbyist Chris Suttle announcing plans to challenge incumbent Jess Anderson for Chapel Hill Mayor – but then Suttle never filed to run, leaving Anderson running unopposed for an easy reelection.
Jess Anderson, Barbara Foushee, and Mark Bell were all reelected easily as mayors of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough.
Likewise, the race for Chapel Hill Town Council also turned out to be a low-key affair. The last five election cycles had been hotly contested, with contentious (and occasionally personal) fights between two local pseudo-parties, the pro-growth NEXT Chapel Hill and the anti-growth Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town (CHALT). But NEXT’s candidates swept the ’21 and ’23 elections as voters grew increasingly concerned about the rising cost of housing – and with those worries still top of mind, CHALT sat out the 2025 race altogether. Coupled with CHALT-aligned incumbent Adam Searing’s decision not to seek reelection, that left voters with a minimal slate of five pro-growth candidates (Wes McMahon, Louie Rivers, Erik Valera, and incumbents Camille Berry and Paris Miller-Foushee) who all backed the town’s existing “complete community” approach to development.
Even the race for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board turned into a nothingburger. In 2023, there had been an astonishing 14 candidates on the ballot – and interest in the schools had only grown since then, with concerns about declining enrollment, tight budgets, and anti-transgender state laws, not to mention the departure of superintendent Nyah Hamlett. Still, only four candidates filed to run for three open seats – and one, Lynnee Argabright, dropped out almost as soon as she dropped in, leaving another uncontested race with three candidates who largely agreed on the district’s overall direction.
In the end, Orange County saw only two contested races in 2025: five mostly-aligned candidates for four Chapel Hill Town Council seats (Valera was the odd man out in fifth), and a nominally-contested race for Carrboro Mayor, where Joe Lloyd filed to challenge incumbent Barbara Foushee but made no effort to campaign. Foushee ultimately won with 96 percent of the vote.
It was still an exciting night for the first-time candidates who won their races – Melinda Manning got elected to the CHCCS board, while Fred Joiner earned a seat on the Carrboro Town Council – but it was an anticlimactic night overall. (How anticlimactic? Voter turnout in Orange County was only 15 percent, down 11 percent from the ’23 election – and significantly lower than the overall 20 percent turnout across North Carolina, virtually unheard of for one of the most politically active counties in the state.)
It was a different story in Orange’s neighboring counties, though, with a packed ballot in Chatham County and several hotly contested races in Durham. Eight candidates filed to run for two open seats on the Pittsboro town board – a closely-watched election, with Chatham Park development in full swing and incumbents Pamela Baldwin and James Vose both stepping down. Ultimately Candace Hunziker and Tiana Thurber came out on top, running jointly on a pledge to preserve Pittsboro’s downtown character. Meanwhile in Durham – where the push for new housing and development has been balanced by worries about gentrification – incumbent mayor Leo Williams fended off a strong challenge from Anjanee Bell to win reelection, but incumbent City Council members DeDreana Freeman and Mark-Anthony Middleton both lost their reelection bids. (Freeman’s narrow loss to Matt Kopac was the most contentious local race of the year; one Freeman supporter even kept it going after Election Day, heckling Kopac at his swearing-in ceremony.)
Candace Hunziker and Tiana Thurber were elected to the Pittsboro Board of Commissioners.
And while 2025 was a sleepy election in Chapel Hill, 2026 is already shaping up to be a different story – and not only because there’ll be a U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in November. Even before the general election, the March 3 primary will feature a 6-person race for four seats on the Orange County School Board, with many of the same key issues as CHCCS – plus several Democratic primary races pitting high-profile contenders against each other. Karen Stegman and Adam Beeman are vying to succeed outgoing Orange County Commissioner Sally Greene; incumbent county commissioner Jamezetta Bedford faces a primary challenge from former Chapel Hill Town Council member Maria Palmer; incumbent sheriff Charles Blackwood has his own primary challenge from David LaBarre – and in a race that’s going to be closely followed across the country, incumbent U.S. House Rep. Valerie Foushee will face progressive Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam in a rematch of their 2022 primary. (Foushee won that race by nine points, but election observers say Allam may have a better chance this time around.)
One thing is almost certain to be true: while 2025 was a sleepier-than-usual election in Chapel Hill, local voters won’t stay asleep for long.
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