CORRECTION

The Tar Heel of the Week profile of Jeffrey Starkweather on Page 1B Sunday incorrectly stated when the Chatham Coalition, Starkweather's community group, was started. It was formed in 2004, before the Chatham County Board of Commissioners approved the Briar Chapel subdivision in February 2005.

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PITTSBORO -- He's goofy, has a big ego and talks too much -- and that's according to his supporters.

But this month, Jeffrey Starkweather changed the landscape of Chatham County for years to come.

He and his community group, the Chatham Coalition, led a successful grass-roots campaign to defeat three county commissioner candidates in the Democratic primary. Two were incumbents, and all three were backed with big money from Triangle developers.

The three men whom the coalition supported promote slow, planned growth, a strategy that Starkweather has pushed for the past few years as Chatham grows at breakneck speed.

And now Starkweather, who was recently named executive director of the North Carolina Smart Growth Alliance, wants to take his slow-growth campaign statewide.

"It's time to turn it back over to the homeowners," he says.

On May 2, Starkweather entered the General Store Cafe in downtown Pittsboro wearing a big smile and a yellow T-shirt that read "De-Bunk Chatham."

The shirt was a dig at commissioners Chairman Bunkey Morgan. Since being elected in 2002, Morgan, a carwash owner, had led the board's majority in approving 10,000 new homes.

Starkweather, 59, who moved to Chatham in 1972, says such growth is too much too fast and the county's water supply and schools can't keep up. So he spent months working to defeat Morgan's bid for re-election.

Chatham, twice as big as Durham County but with about a third of the population, is a county divided. And Starkweather, who seems to thrive on conflict, is often in the middle of it.

Birth of a movement

On election night, Starkweather was ecstatic.

Tom Vanderbeck, who beat Morgan in District 4, is the only Democrat among the coalition's candidates with a Republican opponent in November. The other two winners, George Lucier of District 3 and Carl Thompson of District 5, are all but assured of election.

Starkweather started the coalition in 2004 after Morgan and the county commissioners approved Briar Chapel, a 2,300-home subdivision in northeastern Chatham now being built by Newland Communities, a San Diego-based company.

Shortly after that vote, hundreds of residents protested on the steps of the historic courthouse in Pittsboro, and Starkweather, a loquacious lawyer, was among the speakers.

Inspired by the protest, Starkweather formed the coalition by gathering leaders from groups including Chatham Citizens for Effective Communities, Haw River Assembly and Chatham County United, each of which was fighting sprawl and big developments on its own.

Ever since, Starkweather has been the David to the developers' Goliath. He attends commissioner meetings armed with a pen and yellow highlighter and springs from his seat to implore the board to follow the county land-use plan.

"He's a brilliant, slightly goofy attorney," says Commissioner Patrick Barnes, who was endorsed by the coalition in 2004 and often votes against development projects. "His theories are great, and he talks too much, but he's smart."

Starkweather, who grew up in California, has been involved in politics his whole life.

He campaigned for Robert Kennedy, a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, while in college. Later, he handled mail for Hugh Scott, then a Republican senator from Pennsylvania.

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