‘A shocking new low’: Signs target Chapel Hill council member over this project vote
No election in Orange County is complete without disappearing campaign signs, but this year’s talk is all about who placed roadside signs calling out a Chapel Hill Town Council incumbent.
The three, blue and white signs posted near the Estes Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard intersection — “Stegman voted for AURA & Betrayed You!” — refer to council member Karen Stegman, who is facing several newcomers on this year’s ballot.
Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger, County Commissioner Sally Greene and others have taken to social media to call out the signs, which aren’t signed by any individual or group, as “a shocking new low” for local politics.
The council approved the hotly contested Aura Chapel Hill residential and commercial project in June for a former, 15-acre tree farm at the northeastern corner of the intersection.
Stegman is one of five council members who voted for the project — which will bring 419 apartments and townhomes, plus over 15,000 square feet of commercial space — and the only one up for re-election.
After the vote, Stegman wrote that she supported the project because it offers parks and green spaces, affordable housing near jobs, and transit options. The stormwater requirements ”are far beyond the Town’s already stringent regulations,” she said, and the traffic studies show planned changes will help ease the congestion.
“Aura is not perfect — no project is — but it moves us further on the path towards our shared future vision,” she said.
She has spent time since the vote talking with people on the campaign trail, Stegman said, and also received angry emails — some anonymous — that accused her of betraying the town and the local political action group Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town. CHALT endorsed Stegman in the 2017 election.
She doesn’t know who’s responsible for the signs, Stegman said.
“That’s not a vote I’m trying to hide or that I’m ashamed of,” she said. “It’s the betrayal part that really upsets me. The implication that I have motives other than what I think is best for this town and this community is what really upsets me. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
Signs on the roadside
Other candidates have seen their signs go missing in the last few weeks — a circumstance that is not uncommon in Orange County elections. On Monday morning, The News & Observer found nearly two dozen plucked from the roadside and thrown in the bushes. Some were missing their metal frames.
Friends of the Greene Tract co-founder Adam Searing, who has the CHALT endorsement, said he has lost a couple of hundred roadside signs and picked up a troll on Twitter since launching his campaign. CHALT-endorsed candidate and restaurant owner Vimala Rajendran also reported having about 30 signs a week stolen, including one posted in front of her Franklin Street restaurant.
Signs for two mayoral candidates — incumbent Pam Hemminger and council member Hongbin Gu — also have been pulled from the ground. A third candidate Zachary Boyce has not put up any signs.
CHALT switched its longtime endorsement this year from Hemminger to Gu, who estimated that several hundred campaign signs have either been stolen or vandalized. It’s a change from the 2017 council election when she faced online racism over her Chinese heritage, Gu said.
Last week, she filed a report with the Chapel Hill Police Department. It was the fifth report about missing campaign signs filed since 2017, police records show, including three reports filed during the heated 2020 races for sheriff and county commissioners.
State law makes it a Class 3 misdemeanor to unlawfully remove, steal, deface or vandalize a political sign. A conviction is punishable with a fine of up to a $200.
Rules for political signs
▪ They can be placed on the roadside 30 days before Early Voting begins and must be removed within 10 days after the election.
▪ They do not have to include disclosure information about who paid for them or placed them there.
▪ No signs are allowed along the interstate highway or within 3 feet of the road pavement.
▪ Signs can only be placed in front of a home, business or religious building with the property owner’s permission.
▪ Signs can not block visibility for drivers at an intersection, or block or replace another sign.
▪ Signs can not be posted higher than 42 inches above the pavement or be larger than 864 square inches.
▪ Complaints about the location of a sign, when it is posted or a sign that has not been removed can be made to the local Department of Transportation District Office or to the NCDOT toll free line at 877-368-4968 during normal business hours.
Concerns about public conversation
CHALT founder Julie McClintock, who addressed accusations on Twitter this week, denied her group’s involvement in putting up the anti-Stegman signs in an interview Monday with The N&O.
Stegman has always supported the kind of development that Aura could bring, so “I can’t say that there’s any betrayal involved,” said McClintock, a former council member who has been involved in local politics for decades.
There have been heated contests, such as the 2009 mayoral match between Mark Kleinschmidt and Matt Czajkowski and the 2015 election, which replaced Kleinschmidt and some council members with CHALT-endorsed candidates, but the town’s politics now have become “sort of tribal in nature,” McClintock said.
“Social media doesn’t facilitate thoughtful community discourse, and that makes me sad, because Chapel Hill is famous for having so many people that have so many different views on things and people being active and participating in their government,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it be quite as nasty as it’s been lately.”
Hemminger had similar comments after the June vote, saying some council members had received “threatening and hateful emails” and expressing concern about groups spreading misinformation about the town and the project.
She clarified in a July interview with The N&O that the emails to council members ranged from threats to unseat Aura supporters to accusations that council members were greedy, not doing their due diligence and not listening to the public.
“It’s disconcerting to get things like we got,” Hemminger said. “People threaten all the time, we know — I’m not going to re-elect you or you should be out of office — but they got ugly, which is concerning.”
This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 2:11 PM.
