Elaine O’Neal, retired judge and racial equity leader, will run for mayor of Durham

Retired Superior Court Judge Elaine O’Neal will run for mayor in the Bull City this year, she said Monday.

Born and raised in Durham, O’Neal said she loves her hometown and will formally announce her campaign and platform after spending the next two months listening to residents about what they want from their mayor.

“I want to hear from the community,” she said. “I want to hear from my neighbors, my fellow Durhamites.”

Current Mayor Steve Schewel told The News & Observer on Monday that he will announce soon whether he will seek re-election.

O’Neal worked as the interim dean of N.C. Central University School of Law from 2018 to 2020, The News & Observer reported.

In her judiciary career, she started out by serving as a North Carolina District Court judge in 1994 and was elected to the Superior Court bench in 2011, where she served in the 14th District. She retired before assuming her university leadership role.

O’Neal recently served as chair of the city’s racial equity task force, which delivered a 60-page report to the Durham City Council in July on how Durham can address systemic racism at a local level. She worked on the report alongside 16 other members.

“I am a believer in equity. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been a part of that,” she said.

Omar Beasley, member and former chair of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, told The N&O on Monday he would work with O’Neal on her campaign in a personal capacity, outside his work with the committee.

“I think Durham is ready to make history as well. She would be the first African-American woman to serve as mayor,” Beasley said.

The committee has not officially endorsed any candidates yet this year, and it won’t until after August, he said.

‘Not looking to be a savior’

O’Neal said she will hear from as many Durham residents as she can before she starts offering her own opinions on the city’s issues.

“I don’t come in with some sort of set agenda before I even start talking to people. That’s not how I normally operate,” O’Neal said. “When I was, you know, at the law school, that was the first thing that I did. I spent the first 90 days talking to everybody that was in that building that worked there.”

She will also spend the next few months learning more about what a mayor can and cannot do.

“I am not looking to be a savior. I cannot be that person,” she said. “However I can and have led organizations.”

She said she wants to be a mayor for everybody.

“What do we want, Durham, as a collective? How do we unify? What does that mean? Because that can mean five hundred different things,” she said. “If you ask a person ‘What does justice mean?’ everybody has a different opinion of that.”

“But there’s some commonalities that we can pull. I can’t guess at that. I need to be able to hear it,” she added. “I need to be able to see people to the extent that I can in COVID. You know, it’s just a different kind of campaign.”

Beasley said O’Neal knows Durham well.

“She uniquely understands the issues of violence in our streets. Being from here, understanding the wealth gap and disparities here, having served on a bench and being witness to all of that,” Beasley said. “She’s gonna bring a unique voice and an attentive ear, a keen sense of awareness to all of it.”

“I believe in her,” he added. “That she’ll bring a voice and some solutions to this.”

This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 5:03 PM.