The At-large City Council race confuses even people who have been involved in political campaigns for years.
There are six candidates running in the general election and the top three voter getters will be elected to the City Council. With six candidates running for three seats, no candidate is running against a particular opponent, but every candidate is running against every other candidate.
The six candidates in the order they appear on the ballot are: At-large City Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter, Tracy Furman, At-large City Councilmember Hugh Holston, At-large City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson, Katie Rossabi and Linda Wilson.
Johnson easily won the primary. She was first elected to an at-large seat in 1993 and has won every at-large election since. Johnson was elected mayor in 2007 and the only race she has lost in her political career was running for reelection in 2009.
Abuzuaiter finished second in the primary. She was first elected to an at-large seat in 2011 and has made a practice of finishing second in the at-large general election. She is the chair of the Greensboro Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, which approves transportation projects for the area, and insisted that transportation bonds be included in the bond package.
Furman finished third in the primary and is running as a progressive. She originally announced she would run for the District 3 City Council seat and then switched to at large. In the primary Furman edged out Holston who finished fourth. Holston was appointed to the City Council in September 2021 and is running in his first City Council election. Holston got the endorsement of the Simkins PAC, which didn’t endorse in the primaries.
Rossabi finished fifth in the primary and has the distinction of being the only Republican in this nonpartisan race. Republicans who haven’t had a member of their party on the City Council in four years have asked people to only vote for Rossabi.
Wilson finished sixth in the primary and finds herself in the unenviable position of being last on the ballot, having to move up three spots to win in the general election.
It is not unusual in the at-large race for the top three finishers to be a different top three than in the primary and, in this general election, with the voter turnout projected to be much lower than the voter turnout in the primary, just about anything could happen.
With the numbers that Johnson pulls she too must have many voters that only vote for her. Hopefully the strategy will work for Rossabi to get elected to the council.
How many are honest votes or is a crowd of people going to polling place and saying they are some other than themselves ? With NO voter identification to verify who the person is I wonder how many votes for any candidate is validated? We need voter ID.
Evidence the bullet vote is being used successfully. Don’t get suckered by the advertisement at the voting booth which says “you may vote for 3”. If you want your person to be in office, only vote for them, not voting for any of the others. If you don’t, then you’re giving the opposition a tool to defeat you.