N.C. Central University's WNCU 90.7 FM holds a Meet the Candidates Town Hall Forum at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Michaux School of Education Auditorium. Durham candidates running for mayor and city council will take questions from the audience. NCCU student J. Brett Stargel is serving as moderator.
The event is free to the public and will be carried live at the WUNC website, www.wncu.org. Contact is Kimberley Cartwright, 530-7833.
Steve Schewel has already spent four years on the Durham Public Schools board. Nevertheless, he’s running for a hometown office again.
“I think maybe [because] I love Durham,” he said this week.
Schewel (right) plans to run for an at-large city council seat in this fall’s election. Candidate filing opens July 1.
Three council seats are up for election this year, and incumbent Diane Catotti has said she will not seek re-election. Councilman Eugene Brown has said he will run, while Councilman Farad Ali has yet to announce a decision.
“I came here as a freshman at Duke in 1969 and I loved the place and I’d enjoy another chance to serve,” said Schewel, who is president of Carolina Independent Publications, parent company of The Independent Weekly newspaper.
Schewel said he hasn’t formulated a campaign platform yet, but he is particularly interested in housing, recreation and public-safety issues.
“I don’t want to inflict a campaign on the public” ahead of time, he said. “I’m just trying to continue to learn a lot.”
After an unsuccessful run for city council in 2009 and for the Durham Public Schools board last year, Republican John Tarantino (right) is thinking about trying again.
But he won’t say what for. Durham voters will elect a mayor and three at-large city council members this fall.
“As of tomorrow,” Tarantino said this morning, “I will be meeting with an attorney to form an exploratory committee regarding … this upcoming election.
“If I should run.”
The exploration, he said, would involve, “what kinds of issues will be of importance, what will our priorities be and what will be the structure of the campaign organization.
“It’s very preliminary.”
