Zachary Boyce, candidate for mayor of Chapel Hill

Three people hope to win the Nov. 2 race to become Chapel Hill’s next mayor.

They are UNC-Chapel Hill law student and legal assistant Zachary Boyce, Town Council member Hongbin Gu and incumbent Mayor Pam Hemminger, who is seeking her fourth, two-year term.

Early voting in the nonpartisan election begins Oct. 14 and runs through Oct. 30.

To find polling places and full details on early voting, visit co.orange.nc.us/1720/Elections or contact the Board of Elections at 919-245-2350 or vote@orangecountync.gov.

Name: Zachary Boyce

Age: 25

Residence: Chapel HIll

Occupation: Graduate and professional student

Education: Bachelor of Arts in psychology with a minor in neuroscience; Juris Doctorate/Master of Science in information science, UNC candidate

Political or civic experience: Policy and Advocacy Intern with ACLU of Texas, former Peace Corps volunteer

Campaign website: tinyurl.com/25n4jprp

What do you think the town’s top three priorities should be? Choose one and describe how you will work to address it.

The town’s top three priorities should be:

▪ Expanding the size of the electorate population to include all students living within the municipality and who are eligible to participate

▪ Setting a precedent for effective inter-institutional governance in tandem with student and faculty leadership of the university

▪ Transitioning to sustainable energy sources to decrease carbon emissions

These issues are not mutually exclusive. I am working as a candidate for mayor and as an elected student leader to decrease marginalization in the community. This will take research, collaboration, and an intentional effort to center the voices of the historically minoritized/excluded community members in the process of evidence-based policy formation.

What is the town doing right, and wrong, about development and growth?

The town is right in its acknowledgment that it is long overdue that we transition to sustainable energy sources to bolster inclusive development initiatives and increase access to participation in the economy. I think the municipality could be better enabled to inclusively govern in stride toward these goals if we re-imagined how the administration could optimally serve all members of the community by trusting graduate and professional students to lead with research as a tool of empowerment so we may collectively elevate the quality of service provided to all community members and increase inter-institutional cooperation between the university and the local government administration.

What is special about Chapel Hill now that people don’t know or what you would like the town to be known for in the future?

In the immediate future, meaning as soon as the next mayoral cycle, I would like to make the town of Chapel Hill known and celebrated for leading the Deep South in unprecedented strides toward a long overdue era of restorative justice and racial equity hallmarked by effective and progressive policy models that could be shared throughout the region regarding access to affordable housing and public transportation, comprehensive police reform, pharmacological marijuana research and sustainable solar-energy initiatives.

What skill or life experience do you have that would bring diversity to local government?

No group of people are inherently minorities. Rather, some remain minoritized in institutional spaces that have historically deprived equal and equitable access to material resources based on an enduring legalized legacy of racism as a function of American chattel-slavery and Indigenous land theft.

Diversity is existential for me as a multi-ethnic queer person of African, Indigenous, and European descent; therefore, I think it is important to emphasize that diversity is a tool, not an end-goal for forming the most externally valid research and public policies from within our public university town. I do not get to take off my diversity/inclusion lens after a long day of work because I, like other minoritized people, continue to wear oppression on my skin color.

That said, my advanced legal researching skills compounded by my historically excluded perspective that is also colored by my everyday experiences with discrimination make me the ideal candidate for meeting this moment in history for our society, a moment that demands for those empowered first-hand with cross-culturally integrated leadership perspectives to answer the call to public service in order to heal our community from the generational wounds left open from slavery to the New Jim Crow.

This story was originally published September 28, 2021 at 10:29 AM with the headline "Zachary Boyce, candidate for mayor of Chapel Hill."