Travis Crayton's blog

Graig Meyer selected to fill House District 50 seat

The House District 50 selection committee selected Graig Meyer to replace now-Senator Valerie Foushee as the representative for House District 50 tonight. Meyer was selected by a unanimous vote of the committee on the second ballot.

Interestingly, the committee split its votes five ways on the first round of balloting between Danielle Adams, Laurin Easthom, Meyer, Drew Nelson, and Bernadette Pelissier. Candidates Tommy McNeil and Travis Phelps received no votes. The breakdown of each committee member's votes on the first round can be seen in the table below.

It's rather interesting to me to see how the internal politics of a Democratic Party-based committee such as this one plays out, as you can see from this first round of voting.

Congratulations to Graig, and good luck in Raleigh!

Foushee officially sworn in; HD-50 appointment process begins

With Sen. Valerie Foushee taking the oath of office today at the Chatham County Courthouse in Pittsboro, the appointment process for her replacement to represent House District 50 can officially begin.

If you've been following the news, though, you know that there are already several declared candidates for the seat, and that things have already unofficially begun.

Orange Co. Democratic Women host municipal election forum

The Orange County Democratic Women hosted their municipal election forum last night. All Democratic candidates for Carrboro Board of Aldermen, Chapel Hill Town Council, and Hillsborough Town Board were invited. The moderators of the event announced that Amy Ryan and Sally Greene had conflicts and could not attend, while Paul Neebe did not notify OCDW as to why he did not attend.

Molly and I attended and did our best to provide some livetweets of the event, though that proved difficult at some points, as the forum turned into more of a discussion about halfway through. At that point, candidates and audience members divided up into specific municipalities for municipality-specific questions and answers. I was personally a little frustrated by the format, as I felt that it didn't allow for much discussion of specific issues confronting the towns and our county at large.

If you were unable to attend, you can review our tweets from the event below.

Rosemary Imagined attracts younger voices to town dialogue

Rosemary Imagined, the town's initiative to transform Rosemary Street into a more vibrant part of downtown, held its second event last night at TRU Deli + Wine. Unlike most town events I've been to, this event was held as a social, where attendees could mingle and talk about their thoughts on Rosemary Street freely among each other.

I was able to attend most of the event, and I have to give Meg McGurk, the Executive Director for the Downtown Partnership, and Dwight Bassett, the town's Economic Development Officer, major credit for succeeding in opening the engagement process up to people you don't often see show up for public meetings. Specifically, there were far more young people at this event than any town event I've been to in the past - and given how Rosemary Street and downtown appear to be developing with our town's sizable young population in mind, it's great to see that we're being included in the process of determining what Rosemary Street will become in the future.

Friends of Downtown Chapel Hill Candidate Forum

Yesterday, the Friends of Downtown gathered in the Franklin Hotel for the first candidate forum of this municipal election season. All candidates for Chapel Hill Town Council, except for Jonathan Riehl, were present, as was Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt.

The forum allowed for an opening statement from each candidate, a question from the moderator, and then a follow-up question from the audience. In case you weren't able to attend, below is a Storify recapping the tweets from the event.

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