On Tuesday, Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts lost the Democratic primary to Mayor Pro Tem Vi Lyles 46-36, with North Carolina state Sen. Joel Ford taking a distant 16 percent. Because Lyles took more than 40 percent of the vote, there will not be a primary runoff. Lyles will face City Councilor Kenny Smith, who won the GOP primary against minimal opposition, in the Nov. 7 general election.
As we wrote at the end of last year, Roberts' has had a very rough tenure since she won in 2015. (Charlotte is one of the few large cities to elect mayors to two-year terms.) In early 2016, Roberts and the city council passed a non-discrimination ordinance that prompted the GOP-led state legislature to respond by passing a piece of anti-LGBT legislation known as HB2, which earned the state national scorn and multiple boycotts by high-profile businesses.
The ordinance was repealed at the end of 2016 as part of an apparent deal with the legislature that would supposedly have resulted in HB2 getting repealed afterwards. The Republican leadership responded to Charlotte's move by doing nothing and going home; HB2 was eventually repealed, but the compromise measure enraged LGBT activists.
Like Roberts, Lyles voted for both the non-discrimination ordinance and the repeal. However, Lyles met with GOP legislators in late 2016 about a possible joint repeal, and she's shown more of a willingness to accommodate them than even Roberts had. Lyles also has argued that the mayor didn't work well with the council during the unrest in the city after Keith Scott, a 43-year-old black man, was killed by police in September; Lyles also said at the time that Roberts went too far when she publicly criticized Police Chief Kerr Putney.
During the campaign, Lyles argued that, while she and Roberts agreed on many issues, she would be a more effective leader. Roberts was the only candidate with the money to air ads during the primary, but it was far from enough.
Charlotte is a very blue city, but Smith could pull off an upset win. In 2009, Antony Foxx won a close race to become Charlotte's first Democratic mayor since Harvey Gantt left office in 2009. In 2013, moderate Republican Edwin Peacock lost to Democrat Patrick Cannon 53-47, and he lost to Roberts just 52-48 in 2015. However, Smith is considerably more conservative than Peacock: For one thing, he has slammed the non-discrimination ordinance as "social engineering" on the part of liberals.
Smith was likely planning to run against Roberts, and Lyles may be a more elusive target. However, Smith quickly started arguing that Lyles "voted with Jennifer nearly 100 percent of the time. If you want to move away from the direction that Jennifer Roberts has led us, vote for me." Smith also begins the campaign with a large $323,000 to $43,000 cash-on-hand edge over Lyles.
Whoever wins will be Charlotte's fifth mayor since Foxx resigned in mid-2013 to become secretary of transportation. The city council selected Councilor Patsy Kinsey to serve out the rest of Foxx's term, and she kept her pledge not to run for mayor. Kinsey returned to the city council, but she lost renomination in Tuesday's Democratic primary. Cannon won later that year, but resigned just a few months later after he was arrested for taking bribes from undercover FBI agents; Cannon was released from prison last year. The council picked state Sen. Dan Clodfelter to serve out the rest of Cannon's term, and while he sounded unlikely to run for mayor, he ended up campaigning for a full term anyway, and he lost the primary runoff to Roberts 54-46.