AAUW Greensboro Branch Public Policy strategy for the 2025 City Council election was to educate and motivate by partnering with Temple Emanuel public policy committee using their facility and broader media coverage by partnering with the Carolina Pacemaker newspaper. For the first time, we worked with a group representing 15 local organizations to increase turnout to these forums and added an educational event”
What Does City Council and Why should I care and Vote?”, asked hard questions directly to individual candidates and the public events were offered virtually recording the events on TE Facebook and YouTube. The Sept 11th forum for District 1-5 City Council candidates had 930 views on Facebook. The Oct. 16th forum for Mayor and At-large City Council candidates brought 125 attendees including a group of 6 male students from NCA&T. And we spoke at an event given by the AKA sorority at NCA&T in front of the hopeful pledges about the importance of voting.
Our outreach began as a countdown to help the public remember the City Council election. 42 days until the October 7th primary, to select final candidates for general election. 4 years Greensboro City Council’s elections are every 4 years. 4 new members This year 4 of the City Council’s 9 members aren’t running for their seat. The first time in 10 years, and another is running for Mayor. With this change, over 50% of the council will be new members and only 10% of Greensboro voted in the primary!
In an effort to educate the public of City Council’s responsibilities we held an informal decision with Mayor Nancy Vaughan (2013-2025), former Mayor Keith Holliday (1999-2007) and former City Councilman Justin Outling (2015-2022), What Does City Council and Why should I care and Vote?”
Mayor Holliday said, “The Greensboro economy in 2000 lost 90,000 jobs, the most jobs in the total state. We visited other cities to see how they turned themselves around. Our strategy was to create impact projects that people could feel good about and let the outside world know that Greensboro had turned themselves around.” He built the Baseball Stadium, opened the international Civil Rights Museum and brought Fed Ex.
Mayor Vaughan said, “for many years it looked like we weren’t doing anything—we were laying the infrastructure for water and sewer which led to Toyota electric battery factory.” She brought the largest economic development project in NC history, Jet Zero and turned Greensboro into “aerospace capital of North Carolina.”
Here is a link to the playlist of all three recordings of the events for you to share.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwA9RsVsviuUYsLPa5n_Wcz3lCnG9SOlU