Voters will elect a mayor and three at-large City Council members in Tuesday’s Durham municipal election.
In the mayoral race, voters will elect either incumbent Bill Bell or newcomer James Lyons. Voters will elect three candidates out of the six running for City Council at-large seats. The candidates for the three City Council at-large seats are Ricky Hart, Jillian Johnson, Charlie Reece, Steve Schewel, Michael Shiflett and Robert Stephens. Schewel, Reece and Johnson participated in a forum on Duke’s campus Oct. 15.
Johnson and Schewel both have ties to Duke. Johnson—who is the director of operations for Southern Vision Alliance, a network of organizations focused on education, LGBTQ rights and racial justice—graduated from Duke in 2003.
Schewel, a current City Council member elected in 2011, graduated from Duke in 1973 and received his Ph.D. from Duke in education in 1982. Schewel is now a visiting assistant professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy in addition to his role on the City Council.
The candidates come from a variety of backgrounds, including academia, business and law.
Hart, a case worker for Orange County Child Care Services, is chair of the Durham Human Relations Commission. Reece, a lawyer for the pharmaceutical company Rho, Inc., currently serves as treasurer of the North Carolina Democratic Party. Shiflett is a retired owner of a lab company based in Durham. Stephens currently serves as director of Alumni Teacher Leadership for Teach for America North Carolina.
In the mayoral race, Bell is up for re-election. If elected, this would be Bell’s eighth two-year term in office, and he has announced that—if he wins—the upcoming term would be his last as mayor. In addition to his position as Mayor, Bell serves as executive vice president and chief operating officer of UDI Community Development Corporation.
His opponent, Lyons, currently works for Time Warner Cable and is the founder of the nonprofit community service organization Keys for Life.
3,751 voters turned out during the early voting period for Tuesday’s municipal election, according to the Durham County Board of Elections. The Board of Elections website notes that there are 206,336 total registered voters in Durham County as of October 28, 2015.
Students with East Campus addresses can vote Tuesday from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at George Watts Montessori Magnet School off of East Campus. Patterson Recreation Center is the voting site for students living on West and Central Campuses.
Some students have noted that the lack of a voting site on campus is inconvenient. Duke Student Government is currently working to secure an on-campus voting station for next year’s elections.
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