“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com
What Exactly Happened to CHALT?
A perspective from Tom Jensen
Election Night 2017 was a complete sweep for the Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town, better known as CHALT. All four of its endorsed Town Council candidates won, defeating two incumbents. This came on the heels of its endorsed candidates defeating an incumbent Mayor and two Town Council incumbents in 2015. 7 out of 9 members of the new Town Council were going to be CHALT endorsees, and I spent much of that night on WCHL talking about how it had emerged as the most powerful organization in local politics.
What a difference four years makes. The Town Council that’s sworn in next month will only have three CHALT endorsees left and two of them, Jessica Anderson and Amy Ryan, publicly endorsed Mayor Pam Hemminger for re-election in opposition to the group’s effort to get Hongbin Gu elected as Mayor. At this point Adam Searing will be the only member who was really on board with the organization’s efforts this fall.
CHALT played a big role in Pam Hemminger getting elected Mayor in 2015. This year it tried to take her out. That led to a big question leading up to the election — was it CHALT’s strength that got Hemminger elected, or was it Mayor Pam’s own personal appeal?
A poll we (Public Policy Polling) conducted right before the election provided a pretty clear answer to that question. Pam Hemminger is a very popular Mayor- 57% of voters approve of the job she’s doing to only 22% who disapprove. In a time when voters are really down on politicians, those are stratospheric numbers.
Chapel Hill voters, on the other hand, have a pretty dim view of CHALT. Only 26% see the organization favorably to 40% with a negative view of it. We got a pretty clear answer to the question of whether Mayor Pam was strong or CHALT was strong on Tuesday night when she defeated their endorsed candidate by 25 points. This resounding defeat for Gu came despite her significantly out fundraising Hemminger according to the latest available reports.
So what happened to CHALT to cause it to go from powerhouse to pariah in such a short span of time? I think the simple answer is that the organization came off as more and more unreasonable over the years. And I think that was encapsulated by its choosing to engage in a public feud with the East Chapel Hill High student newspaper this fall. Healthy political organizations don’t tend to get in fights with high school newspapers.
This fall CHALT decided not to endorse two candidates- Mayor Pam whose popularity has already been discussed and Karen Stegman (who’s also very popular with a 56/14 favorability rating) that it had endorsed in the past. Given how well received the work of both those women has been during their time in office I think the average Chapel Hill voter’s reaction was that if CHALT didn’t like them anymore, that raised more questions about CHALT than it did about Hemminger or Stegman. That was reinforced by both of CHALT’s winning endorsees in 2019 siding with Hemminger over the group- the organization increasingly found itself on an island by itself.
It’s also a simple reality that voters don’t agree with CHALT’s core position that Chapel Hill is growing too fast. 52% of voters either think the community is growing at the right rate (38%) or that it’s growing too *slow* (14%). Just 41% share the view that there’s too much growth too fast.
One irony is that Chapel Hillians actually like CHALT’s losing endorsees. Hongbin Gu has a 47/25 favorability rating and Vimala Rajendran’s is 48/17. On the curve of what we see across the country, those are very strong numbers. But given their close association with CHALT and its unpopularity in the community, that endorsement probably hurt them more than it helped them this time around. I think Gu in particular would be a strong candidate to return to the Town Council in the future if she didn’t let herself be associated so closely with the organization.
The big question now is where CHALT goes from here. Will there be some introspection and a recognition that the organization needs to change its image to again be an effective force in the community? Or will it just make a bunch of excuses and blame the media for its failures? The answer to that will determine whether the 2021 election was the end for CHALT or a new beginning.
“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com
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> The big question now is where CHALT goes from here. Will there be some introspection and a recognition that the organization needs to change its image to again be an effective force in the community?
Narrator: Unfortunately no, there was no introspection
CHALT’s vision of a Chapel Hill as a center for urban sprawl is woefully behind the times and always was. It’s just taken a few years for people to figure out the difference between the language they used, which was so vague that no one could disagree, and the actual policies they backed.
As for their attitude towards criticism from a high school student, that hasn’t changed either. Since their inception they’ve preferred vilification over respectful dialog. A healthy, inclusive organized would have praised the high student for wanting to get involved in local politics and I invited her to CHALT meetings to learn more about the organization. They chose, as they have so many times in the past, the low road.