Elections

The editors of OrangePolitics are excited to announce our first-ever online candidate forums for the upcoming Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board, Carrboro Board of Aldermen, and Chapel Hill Town Council elections. Orange County journalist Kirk Ross, former editor of the Carrboro Citizen and a columnist for both the Citizen and the Independent Weekly among others, will serve as the moderator of all three forums.

Each forum will consist of real-time written conversations between the candidates and the moderator. Questions will be solicited from OP readers before and during the forum. The moderator will have final say in question selection. The events will take place online at orangepolitics.org, with one evening dedicated to each race covered.

What question would you like asked? Post it in the comments below!

Many of you may assume - as I did - that all the elected officials in Orange County are registered as either Democrat or Unaffiliated voters. If so, then you would be wrong.

In the process of compiling information for a forthcoming spreadsheet of candidate information, I learned that Hillsborough Town Commissioner Evelyn Lloyd recently changed her registration from D to R. Just like that, we now have a Republican elected in Orange County - breaking many years of tradition. OK.

It's not unusual for one Republican to run in the lonely primary for County Commissioner in even years. Like it or not, it's understood that they will not be elected when put to a county-wide vote (especially since the Commissioners designed their district system to only barely change the status quo) but it's certainly their prerogative to run. It is even more Quixotic to run as a Republican in odd years when we elect our municipal leaders and our city school board.