In Chapel Hill, a particularly ugly fight over a college town’s future | Opinion

Anyone who thinks local elections are boring probably hasn’t lived in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, where races for mayor and town council are almost always competitive.

But town leaders and residents still can’t quite believe how contentious this year’s election cycle has gotten, as they witness a degree of mudslinging that seems uglier than ever.

To understand what’s going on in Chapel Hill, you need a little bit of background about the town’s politics. Like many cities and towns across America, Chapel Hill has a vocal contingent of older, wealthier homeowners who are wary of change. There is significant tension over development and how much — or how fast — the town should grow.

Despite the fact that Chapel Hill faces a housing availability and affordability crisis that disproportionately affects students and workers, too many homeowners object to plans that would help address it. In a recent town survey, 50% of respondents answered “none” when asked what kinds of housing could be added to their neighborhood to address the housing shortage.

This tension is not new. Groups like Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town (commonly known as CHALT) often oppose new development, and loudly. They have been deeply involved in Chapel Hill politics for years now — speaking out at town council meetings, circulating mailers and petitions and endorsing candidates in local elections. Similar dynamics exist in other wealthy, liberal college towns like Ann Arbor, Berkeley and Palo Alto.

“Everybody will fly a gay pride flag in front of their house, but if you ask them if it would be OK to put a duplex next to their house?” Melody Kramer, a Carrboro resident who writes for a popular local blog, said. “I think people don’t want to do anything that affects their comfort level or changes things.”

Kramer has witnessed the ugliness of the election cycle firsthand. Last week, she said that one of the blog’s critics contacted her employer to report Kramer for engaging in “political activities on state time.” (Kramer is a state employee but took the day off to volunteer as a poll greeter at an early voting site.) The critic happens to be a vocal supporter of Adam Searing, a town council member and current mayoral candidate.

“Let’s call this what it is: harassment, bullying, and political intimidation,” Kramer wrote.

The blog — named Triangle Blog Blog — is a self-described progressive civics blog in Chapel Hill and Carrboro with dozens of contributors. Over the past year, Triangle Blog Blog has emerged as somewhat of a foil to groups like CHALT. Its contributors certainly don’t hold back in their criticism of Searing or CHALT, with blog posts like “Adam Searing is Chapel Hill’s FOX News.” This year, Triangle Blog Blog made its own endorsements for mayor and town council and compiled election guides for voters.

Searing, who is supported by members of CHALT, has called Triangle Blog Blog a “dark money group” that participates in “attack politics,” and publicly shared documents that list the names and addresses of its founders. A candidate for town council has criticized the blog on Facebook at least half a dozen times. Earlier this year, a CHALT coordinator doxxed Triangle Blog Blog by posting the addresses of several of its contributors online. Someone is even displaying a homemade sign that says “Down with the progressive BlogBlog” in their yard.

“When people are calling your employer or sending you hate mail or calling you Nazis on NextDoor, that’s not appropriate,” Kramer said. “It crosses a line. And it feels like lots of lines have been crossed recently.”

A number of candidates, as well as current members of town council, have condemned this behavior. Searing has not. I asked Searing whether he thought it was inappropriate for one of his supporters to contact Kramer’s employer. He said, “Well, I don’t know anything about that.”

So I asked whether, in general, he thought calling somebody’s employer was appropriate. He said, “I don’t have any interest in calling anybody or anything like that. But I would advise everybody to obey the state law and make sure they’re doing that.”

A ‘very deliberate effort’

But it’s not just the intimidation tactics that local leaders are concerned about. It’s the rhetoric as well.

“There has been a very deliberate effort, not only to disagree with policy, but to undermine or challenge the legitimacy of the governmental institutions, and particularly the town council,” Michael Parker, a town council member since 2015, told me.

Both as a council member and now in the race for mayor, Searing often speaks of town politics in “us vs. them” terms. He’s warned of “glass skyscrapers built by out-of-town developers” and accuses his colleagues of “routinely [ignoring] the will of residents.” And he paints himself as someone willing to stand up to the “establishment” and the “powers that be” in Chapel Hill.

I asked Searing who, exactly, the “powers that be” are.

“Many of the folks either currently on the council or in other groups that are active in town politics have been running things for the last eight years, and they like the way things are going,” Searing said. “It’s threatening to have a new group come in and want to take things in a different direction.”

Ironically, the group that has been most active in town politics over the past eight years is CHALT, which endorsed Searing in 2021 and whose members are supporting his campaign for mayor this year. Until 2021, nearly every candidate endorsed by CHALT won their election.

Adding to the chaos is the fact that emotion-laden statements and half-truths seem to dominate the discourse. Searing has said that certain decisions about the future of downtown will lead to “a soulless municipality that is just built up but lacks any character of what everybody loves about Chapel Hill.” CHALT has warned of the potential implications of allowing multifamily zoning, including that more density will lead to the destruction of green space and sever people’s “bond” with their homes. A separate movement called “Save Chapel Hill,” complete with a website and yard signs that said “Protect Our Neighborhoods,” was formed to oppose changes to single-family zoning. Of course, that begs the question: From whom — or what — does Chapel Hill need saving?

Intentional or not, the ugliness does seem to have affected voters. INDY Week reported last week that “Not sure” is leading in recent polling for both mayor and town council — an unusually high number of undecided voters so close to the election.

Perhaps that’s because with so many competing fact-checks and hair-splitting on so many issues, it’s hard to distinguish what the truth really is. Jess Anderson, a town council member and Searing’s opponent in the mayoral race, said that people have come to voting sites “with a lot of misconceptions and misinformation,” such as that Anderson is sold out to developers and wants to ruin their neighborhoods.

“Scaring people and fomenting grievances, we’ve seen it at the federal level and the state level as well. It does work in the short term,” Anderson said. “The problem is, people don’t just stop feeling that way once the election is over. You have a community that is not trusting and confused and doesn’t know if government is trying to harm them or be dishonest with them.”

This election cycle, perhaps more than most, seems to be the apotheosis of a fight over Chapel Hill’s future. But it is also a case study in how our political discourse has devolved and become saturated with disinformation, mudslinging and intimidation — and that’s not just limited to Chapel Hill. We see it, too, in towns like Huntersville, where fearmongering over abortion, gun control and transgender rights has made its way into elections for mayor and town council, despite the fact that such issues are completely irrelevant to municipal government.

“It’s ugly. It’s really ugly,” Kramer said. “And, you know, that’s not what makes a community to me.”