‘A historic moment for our city’: Attorney Stormie Forte joins Raleigh City Council
The appointment of Stormie Forte marks several firsts for the Raleigh City Council.
She will be the first Black woman to serve on the council.
She will be the first lesbian on the council — which just had its first openly gay members elected in 2019.
And she will be one of the first Black people to represent a part of the city outside southeast Raleigh.
Tuesday morning Forte, 49, was sworn-in at the Raleigh Municipal Building in a private ceremony, wearing a UNC-Chapel Hill mask, with a handful of friends and family members.
N.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Morgan, wearing a red mask, bumped elbows with Forte’s mother and gave Forte a sideways hug with the heads facing in opposite directions.
He swore her in as a council member in front of about two dozen people, most of them city staff members. They sat with seats blocked off between them and orange cones blocking aisles from use.
It was in sharp contrast to the formal swearing-in for the City Council seven months ago when a crowd filled Raleigh Union Station while bands and choirs performed, drinks were served and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Hamilton the Pig made a guest appearance.
“I do want to have some sort of public acknowledgment for Stormie,” Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said Tuesday. “We had the pomp and circumstance at Raleigh Union Station, and we are in an empty city council chambers. This is a historic moment in our city. And we need to celebrate that.
‘Unique and needed perspective’
Forte’s atypical swearing-in ceremony matched the unusual circumstances of her appointment.
The Raleigh native was one of five finalists out of 54 qualified applicants seeking to replace former council member Saige Martin, who resigned after The News & Observer reported sexual misconduct allegations against him. Martin had just unseated an incumbent in 2019.
Forte expressed interest in the seat soon after Martin’s resignation but said none of the council members had reached out to her about the position.
“After careful consideration of all the applicants, Stormie Forte stood out because of her experience as an attorney, her work in the criminal justice system, her understanding of government and her community involvement over many years in Raleigh,” Baldwin said. “She will also bring a unique and needed perspective as an African-American woman and as a member of our LGBT community. She is the right person at this time.”
Forte’s appointment means a great deal to many people, Morgan said. She represents people who “tend to be underrepresented at the most and sometimes even unrepresented at the least, he said.
“For her to have this historic milestone in the history of an evolving city such as Raleigh means so much,” he added. “She is more than ready to meet this moment.”
Forte’s City Council priorities
Forte is an attorney who had her own practice, served as an assistant attorney general in the state and was ombudsman for the N.C. State Crime Laboratory. She now hosts a community talk radio show and consults on political campaigns.
Her mother, Frances Forte Hinton, took photos on her iPad before she was called up to stand next to Forte during the swearing-in ceremony.
“That’s my baby,” she said. “I’ll be supporting her 100 percent.”
When Forte was little, her mother used to work as a legal secretary in the state Attorney General’s Office. At night she’d talk about the briefs she had to type up.
“She was small,” Hinton said. “I knew she didn’t understand what I was talking about, but I think it just rubbed off on her.”
Her legal experience is one of the areas Forte wants to draw upon to address the tensions between some city residents and the Raleigh Police Department. Easing that tension and addressing affordable housing, economic development opportunities and park inequities are her priorities.
Forte has always lived in Raleigh and remembers spending time on N.C. State University’s campus, where her father worked.
“A number of the restaurants I enjoyed as a kid are gone. It’s a totally different area,” she said. “I know there are folks who want to preserve the character and the way their neighborhoods are set up.”
But there has to be a place for newcomers to live, she said.
“We have to have places for people to live,” Forte said. “I want to look for solutions to the housing crunch we are experiencing. It’s not like you can hang up a sign and say ‘Raleigh is closed.’”
Consensus building
Forte got to know Morgan well during his campaign for the state Supreme Court in 2016. She soon became part of his “Inner circle,” he said.
“She has a way of playing chess while others are playing checkers,” Morgan said. “And in that respect, she certainly does help people understand what they may not see or appreciate at the time.”
She used her analytical skills in understanding societal issues and meeting the challenges of running a statewide campaign.
“Stormie is a consensus builder,” Morgan said. “She knows how to bring people together for the common good. But she does have her strengths of character and therefore her strengths of belief. So she will certainly be conciliatory, but she will at the same time make her positions rationally known so as to be able to try and build that consensus in light of her lens and her views.”
Morgan’s successful campaign captured the attention of Raleigh attorney Charles Francis. He hired her as a consultant during his 2017 mayoral race.
“(Forte’s) appointment is a very positive step forward for Raleigh,” Francis said. “One that is long overdue. She is the first woman of color to serve on the Raleigh City Council, and this is the first time, in a number of years, that an African American representative on the council has not been limited to the District C seat.”
District C includes southeast Raleigh while Forte will represent the southwest part of the city.
Despite being appointed by the council members, Forte won’t feel beholden to vote in lockstep, Francis said.
“Stormie will be her own person and she will be an independent voice for her district, for the Black community and for all the city,” Francis said.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 12:34 PM.
