The winner of the Democratic primary in the South Ward will in all likelihood go unchallenged in the general election in November. So voters in that ward should turn out in large numbers for the Sept. 15 primary and carefully consider the two candidates, incumbent Molly Leight and challenger Wesley Hudson. We believe that Leight has earned a second term.
Hudson, 39, grew up in Radford, Va., and holds a master's degree from the UNC School of the Arts. He owns a remodeling company and a landscaping business.
He is making his first run for office and is not accepting any campaign contributions because he said they might lead to conflicts of interest.
He supports the downtown baseball stadium but said that the council did not exercise enough foresight, and that led to its recent decision to approve a $15.7-million bailout for the project.
The city made a brilliant move in landing the Dell computer plant, he said, but didn't exercise enough long-term planning to anticipate the plant's recent struggles, which led to layoffs earlier this year. Incentives are essential to compete in business, he said, but they must be done with careful forethought.
Hudson is an advocate of controlled growth and lower property taxes for those who keep farms and forests intact.
He wants to privatize such city services as garbage collection and leaf removal to cut expenses and taxes and to support private enterprise. "Any time private enterprise can compete for a job, the price of that job goes down," Hudson said.
Leight is 64. Before she won her council seat, she had served as a founding member and president of the Winston-Salem Neighborhood Alliance. She is from a Walkertown family but grew up in Turkey; her father was a buyer for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. She's a graduate of Salem College and retired in 2000 as a research assistant at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
She won her seat from Vernon Robinson, a Republican who became notorious for his negative attitude and grandstanding. Leight, as liberal as her predecessor was conservative, stays in constant contact with the residents of the ward. She's conscientious and a hard worker who helped get ordinances passed that protect trees and regulate storm-water runoff and signs in the city. She is the vice chairwoman of the public safety committee.
Leight sees incentives as a necessary evil. Council approved incentives for the Dell plant before she was elected to the council. Although she worries about the state of the computer industry in general, she said that the local plant "was a case of getting a really big employer here that would raise the tax base for the city."
She stands by the council's approval of a total of $27.7 million in financial support for the baseball stadium -- including the $15.7 million in support that was approved in June. Developer Billys Prim's buyout of his partner, Flip Filopowski, and the recession were unforeseen circumstances, Leight said. "Some of the opposition melted away a bit when Mr. Prim agreed to the deal of allowing the city to have title to the ballpark and the land," she said.
We trust that she'll continue working hard for the South Ward and for the city as a whole. And we hope to see her take on more of a leadership role on the council. The Journal endorses Molly Leight in the Democratic primary for the South Ward.
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