Top Candidates for Interim Charlotte Mayor Address Council Before Vote

Charlotte City Council held a special meeting on Thursday afternoon that allowed council members to engage with the five final candidates for interim mayor before an upcoming vote to appoint Mayor Vi Lyles’ temporary replacement. 

What’s next:

Charlotte City Council is scheduled to vote on the interim mayoral appointment at its meeting on Monday, June 22. All five candidates will be eligible for the vote. Following a public forum, council members will cast their votes and if no candidate receives six or more votes, runoffs will take place until some candidate reaches the majority six votes needed to be appointed mayor. 

Why is Charlotte City Council appointing an interim mayor?

While it was common knowledge among local experts that Mayor Vi Lyles was unlikely to run for a sixth term in office in the 2027 local elections, it came as a surprise to many when she announced on May 7 that she will resign early, effective June 30. ⁠

Lyles said she was leaving office to spend more time with her grandchildren, with 18 months remaining on her tenure. 

As is the case with any departure from Charlotte City Council, Lyles’ colleagues on council are tasked with appointing a replacement. 

The city opened up the application process for Lyles’ replacement on June 2. Of more than 100 who applied before the June 9 deadline, 69 were deemed eligible by fitting all of the criteria — someone who is at least 21 years old, a registered voter in Mecklenburg County, lives in Charlotte, is a registered Democrat, and is qualified to vote in Charlotte City Council elections. 

Out of that group, nearly 40 people spoke during an interim mayoral candidates forum on Monday, each one given two minutes to address council members with no follow-ups or back and forth discussion. From there, council members were asked to provide their top three nominees and city staff worked out the five candidates with the most nominations. 

On Wednesday, the city announced the five final nominees to finish out Mayor Vi Lyles’ term: Harold Cogdell, a former city council rep and county commissioner; Carrie Cook, founder of the GreenLight Fund and community leader; Robert Harrington, president of the NC Bar Association; Mayor Pro Tem James “Smuggie” Mitchell; and NC Sen. Caleb Theodros. 

All five got a chance to speak to the full council during Thursday’s special meeting. 

What the interim mayoral candidates had to say

The first randomly selected candidate to be chosen to speak was NC Sen. Caleb Theodros, former chair of the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Theodros would need to leave his seat in the NC Senate if he were to be appointed. 

Asked what issues he believes constituents may have with his candidacy, Theodros acknowledged that he’s already received questions surrounding his age (He’s 32). He insisted his past work in local and state politics speaks for itself and, as much as he’s learned that growing a beard or trying to present as older doesn’t help, it’s the work he’s done on the ground that proves his competency.

Asked what he believes the biggest challenge facing the city right now is, Theodros said it involves the mayor, city manager and city council not working cohesively to tackle specific issues.

He said his experience chairing Black Political Caucus meetings, where he balanced an array of personalities and viewpoints, has set him up to help make council meetings and the business carried out at those meetings operate more smoothly.

In an interesting and perhaps telling sidebar conversation, council member Dante Anderson pointed out that one of the agreed upon questions that council members were reading off of stated that the next mayor will oversee the appointment of the next city manager. 

While there have been rumblings that city manager Marcus Jones may soon be leaving, nothing has been announced and Anderson insisted that she was unaware of any such plans. She asked if the question was appropriate to ask to the candidates, which led council members to edit the question. 

From there on out, the question referred more broadly to potential appointments of the three officials the council is in charge of: city manager, city attorney, and city clerk.

During his Q&A with council, Harold Cogdell pointed to the recently enacted Iryna’s Law as an example of why more nuance is needed in discussions around public safety. 

“Is this ultimately going to increase public safety or is this going to increase incarceration?” he asked. “Because increasing incarceration when you’re not getting at the core issues of why a person is being incarcerated is not necessarily creating a safer community.” 

As for the biggest issue facing the city, Cogdell echoed Theodros in saying that it’s about getting council to build consensus on all of the issues it faces in a more unified and coherent manner. (Candidates were sequestered and could not hear each other’s responses.)

“Every one of you sitting here knows more than the five of us sitting out there,” said Cogdell, “and if whomever sits in that chair is not willing to listen to you all and listen to the community, I think some shortsighted decisions could get made.”

In his closing comments, Cogdell said, “I encourage you to look at the qualifications, the skillset, the experience of the applicants. Ask yourself who do you think you could work with? Who do you think will be a moderate, sensible, common-sense voice that won’t go out and speak on behalf of the city of Charlotte when the council hasn’t authorized that? I’m not saying anybody has done that, but you work within the parameters that your governing body works within.”

Mayor Pro Tem James “Smuggie” Mitchell is next up to be interviewed by his colleagues on council. He was the only sitting council member to apply for the position. 

Asked about next step in addressing congestion along I-77 corridor following the recent rescission of council’s support for the toll lane project, Mitchell said, “We need to make sure we have the right stakeholders in the room, and to make sure this council is fully aware of all the ramifications as it relates to I-77. It was very clear that design was a big issue. We have to address the design to address this traffic issue.” 

He added that any plan moving forward will need to involve better communication with neighbors and a different approach to dialogue with NCDOT. He also clarified that he would not support rescinding the rescission. “There has to be a new model that we put forth for this community to solve this problem.”

Mitchell barely let Anderson finish her question about the biggest challenge facing the city right now before answering: public safety. “I think we heard loud and clear that this community does not feel safe, so if that’s your perception it will become your reality … Public safety touches on economic development, it touches our neighborhoods. It’s a selling card that people say, ‘I want to move to Charlotte because it’s safe.’”

Mitchell said that’s why he is happy the newly passed FY2027 budget addresses public safety as a priority, adding that any discussion of public safety must also include Vision Zero and other traffic safety initiatives, as the new budget does.

As current president of the NC Bar Association, Robert Harrington acknowledged that he is one of two in the final candidate pool who have not served in public office. He said his roles with the NCBA and on the board of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library have provided him a good deal of experience in the public sector. 

Harrington said the biggest issue in Charlotte broadly involves affordability, especially in housing, and ensuring that “in a prosperous city, the prosperity is shared as broadly as it should be. Affordable housing is in the middle of that” alongside wraparound services for those impacted by the housing crisis. 

“Charlotte has been incredibly good to me and my family, I believe very strongly in paying that forward and this is perhaps the ultimate way of paying that forward,” said Harrington. “Collaboration, communication, transparency, continuing to work together in an orderly manner, I would hope would all be hallmarks of this 18 months. And I see this 18 months … as a bridge from now until the next elected mayor, hoping to put this city in the next mayor’s and council’s hands in fantastic shape.”

Carrie Cook, the final candidate to speak on Thursday, founded the GreenLight Fund and most recently worked as VP of community development for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Cook currently serves on the board of the Westside Community Land Trust and formerly served on the city’s affordable housing committee. “When people have housing that’s connected to transit, connected to sidewalks, connected to work, that allows our folks to live, work and play here in a way that everybody can benefit from.”

Cook said the biggest challenge facing our city is how to balance the population growth with ensuring that economic prosperity is possible for everyone who’s arriving without neglecting those who are already here. “We’re a world-class city, the secret is out and people are coming.”

Said her current transitional status in terms of professional life is why she’s interested in serving the community as mayor on an interim basis before moving on to the next chapter in her career.

Read more: City Council Passes 150-Day Moratorium on Data Center Petitions

Asked what issues people may have with her candidacy, Cook said some have concerns that she’s too business-oriented due to her past roles as vice president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce and with the Richmond Fed, while others think she’s too community-oriented as a grassroots organizer and nonprofit leader. 

“I think that’s what we would aspire to have in a leader who has sat at the table, who has advanced issues, who knows what people across different perspectives are leaning into, who has relationships across those different groups,” Cook said. “I think that’s the kind of person who’s uniquely served in this moment and I have those relationships, skills and experiences.”