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.

******

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.

When his first wife got a job in North Carolina, Starkweather started writing for the Chatham County Herald, a weekly newspaper he eventually bought and ran for 11 years.

"It was the kind of job that fit my personality and skills," he recalls, adding that he used the paper to investigate the county government.

In 1986, having sold the paper, divorced and remarried, he entered law school at N.C. Central University and joined the county planning board.

Dogging his foes

"Jeff Starkweather is tenacious," says Mark Barroso, a county activist who has led the effort to keep Wal-Mart out of northeastern Chatham. "If he's on to you, he's like a dog that's bitten your ankle and won't let go."

Some say Starkweather can be divisive, and leaders in the black community accuse him of not caring about their concerns.

Several refused to comment for this report, including Mary Nettles, the Democratic leader the coalition helped beat in District 3.

Thompson, who won a spot on the ballot in District 5 and is a friend of Starkweather, acknowledges discontent with the coalition in the black community.

"He is a confident person, and people mistake that for arrogance," Thompson says. "He has real heart and wants to make sure people, regardless of race, creed or color, are treated fairly."

Morgan, who received 38 percent of the vote in the primary and was the principal target of the coalition's fury, would only say its members are "a hard-working group of people."

Nick Tennyson, who leads the Home Builders Association of Durham, Orange and Chatham Counties, said his group will be watching the new leadership.

"It's like a dog chasing a bus, but when he finally catches the bus, what does he do with it?" he said.

Sprinting ahead

Starkweather, with his mop of curly brown hair and glasses, and his tendency to mutter to himself at meetings, could play the role of an absent-minded professor. But he tends to work more like the Tasmanian Devil.

"I'm a person who is accused of having an idea a minute," he says, adding that he probably has attention deficit disorder.

That is how he explains the dozen speeding tickets on his driving record and why he ignored a subpoena from the N.C. State Bar to respond to a complaint from a former client.

"I was doing way too many things at that time," he says.

But it's that same energy that has helped Starkweather make his mark on the county.

"He has a clear picture of strategy and direction," says Jan Nichols, the coalition's treasurer and Web designer.

As a disc jockey played John Lennon's "Power to the People" at the General Store Cafe on election night, Starkweather was already planning for new battles.

Chatham's election results, he said, were a victory for controlled growth and a challenge to other communities to take back their governing boards.

"We want to be communicating with other cities in the Triangle to do what we did here on the state level.

JEFFREY STARKWEATHER

BORN: May, 5, 1947, Oakland, Calif.

FAMILY: Wife, Dee Reid; son, Sampson Starkweather; daughter, Emily Tinervin; granddaughter, Ryan Tinervin; parents, Sampson and Martha Starkweather; siblings, Stephen and Marcia.

EDUCATION: N.C. Central University School of Law 1989; B.A. political science and economics, University of Redlands, California, 1969

CAREER: Executive director of North Carolina Smart Growth Alliance; attorney, Governor's Advocacy Council for Persons with Disabilities, 2004-06; lawyer in Pittsboro, 1992-2004; assistant federal public defender, eastern district of North Carolina, 1989-1991; editor and co-publisher, Chatham County Herald, 1973-1984.

CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS: Chatham Coalition, founder and president; Chatham Citizens for Effective Communities, board of directors; Pittsboro Together; two terms on the Chatham County planning board; Chatham County Arts Council, vice president, board of directors, volunteer legal counsel; Mental Health Association of Orange County, board of directors, 1996-1999; Chatham and Orange County Dispute Settlement Centers, volunteer mediator, 1984-1994; Chatham County Soccer League, co-founder and coach, 1983-1986.