In this year’s local primaries, Riverside was quite literally on the ballot.
A 2020 graduate, Elijah King, was running for City Council, while two Riverside affiliates were running for mayor, former staff member Pablo Friedmann and former RHS parent Leonardo Williams. When the Oct. 7 results came in, only one of these candidates made it through to the general election: incumbent mayor Williams.
Did these candidates fail because their platforms were poor, or they were controversial? No, they failed because of low voter turnout.
According to the Board of Elections, out of 240,000 voters in Durham, only 25,012 people voted, which is a measly turnout of 12.86%. This low engagement is a major problem. In a democracy, the best legal way to make change is the ballot box. This local primary may have seemed small, but out of the many elections, it’s the one that impacts us the most.
With so many local issues impacting us on a daily basis, from public transportation to the high youth crime rate, most of them cannot be solved by anybody except our local government. And on this year’s ballot, we had candidates with new perspectives and ideas to solve these problems. Friedmann proposed genuine solutions to youth gun violence through working with the federal government on gun tracing. In the city council race for Ward 1, King was the only candidate from
Durham.
But instead of change, we got more of the same. Every incumbent in Durham moved forward from the primary, with shills of Political Action Committees and big real estate moving forward next to them.
For example, mayoral candidates Anjanée Bell and Williams, had less than 30% of their money coming from Durham, and a significant percentage of both of their total money raised was from real estate.
Bell’s entire campaign was based upon the fact that she was the daughter of former mayor Bill Bell, a man who left office almost a decade ago. Riverside seniors now eligible to vote were in second grade when Bell was mayor. Is that vision even still relevant today?
Unfortunately, we might not see a new vision for Durham this election because not enough people cared to vote. The youth crime rate will continue to rise, landlords and real estate tycoons will dominate the housing market with unfair rates and prices, and both the wealth and education gap will expand.
If we want to make better changes for the future, we need to make sure to vote, in this election and all
future ones.
