THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 9, 1995 TAG: 9511090396
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
North Carolina: home of the Bible Belt, Sen. Jesse Helms' brand of conservatism and one of the nation's few openly gay mayors.
Voters in Carrboro elected Mike Nelson, who is believed to be the first homosexual mayor in state history. He said his sexuality wasn't an issue to voters in the former mill town neighboring Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina.
``I think the issues in this race were growth and taxes and the environment. That's how people voted and how they made their decision and that's the issues that I ran on,'' Nelson said, following his victory Tuesday night.
Nelson, who has been a town alderman for two years, won with 1,272 votes in a three-way race in which second-place finisher Randy Marshall garnered 699 votes.
Steady rain, tornado-like conditions and apathy kept most eligible voters away from the polls Tuesday as communities statewide held elections for local offices. Turnout in Raleigh and Durham hovered in the range of 20 percent.
The 20-percent turnout in Greenville angered mayoral challenger Cameron Morris, who lost to incumbent Nancy Jenkins 3,706 to 1,680.
``I pretty much thought it was a pathetic showing. That's one of the worst election turnouts probably ever,'' Morris said.
Other cities holding mayoral elections included Charlotte, Greensboro Asheville, Durham, Fayetteville, High Point and Burlington.
In the state's largest city, Republican Pat McCrory defeated Hoyle Martin to succeed a man McCrory describes as his mentor, Richard Vinroot. Vinroot is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination next year.
In Durham, incumbent Sylvia Kerckhoff defeated former mayor Harry Rodenhizer Jr. Kerckhoff by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.
Greensboro Mayor Carolyn Allen defeated Tom Phillips with 53 percent of the vote.
In High Point, Mayor Becky Smothers defeated Michael Miller in a landslide. Smothers garnered 87 percent of the vote.
In Fayetteville, J.L. Dawkins swept to his fifth term as mayor, defeating Bob Shoptaw 6,183 to 2,488. Shoptaw and three city council candidates emphasized their ties to the Republican Party even though the council race is a non-partisan election. All four lost.
Asheville Mayor Russ Martin convincingly won a second term, beating Vice Mayor Chris Peterson by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Peterson was hurt by his August arrest for driving while impaired. He pleaded guilty to the charge in September.
Martin will work with a slate of candidates he supported after all five candidates backed by a conservative political action committee lost.
Raleigh will have its most conservative City Council in decades after voters elected three candidates supported by Mayor Tom Fetzer, a Helms protege. Fetzer easily won re-election last month.
In the every-vote-counts category:
Bryson City voters left John Welch and Cecil Sutton knotted at 225 votes each in an alderman's race.
Joe Barbour won re-election as Burlington's mayor by 180 votes. He beat Caroline Ansbacher in a race in which 5,658 votes were cast.
In Blowing Rock, the rivalry between Rufus ``Gene'' Hallmark and Hayden Pitts resumed in the mayor's race. Hallmark won by nine votes over Pitts, who took a 25-vote victory over Hallmark in the 1991 mayoral election.
In 1993, Hallmark defeated Pitts by 15 votes.
The two candidates are at odds over the proposal to widen U.S. Route 321 through town. Hallmark prefers a bypass while Pitts says the project would ease pressure on traffic-clogged streets.
Voters in Union County rejected a 3-cent ``school technology'' tax, 4,957 to 4,916. The tax, which would have been added to Union Countians' property taxes, would have been used to provide computers, software and technological training for teachers at Union County's 26 schools.
In Weddington, voters rejected liquor by the drink for the bedroom community near the Union-Mecklenburg line, 898 to 725.
Voters in Mecklenburg, Forsyth, Johnston, Craven and Davie counties approved proposals to borrow for school construction or expansion.
KEYWORDS: ELECTION RESULTS by CNB