Bell, mayor since 2001, received 131 of those votes, bringing his total to 9,378, about 81 percent of the vote.  Williams, a pastor at Assembly at Durham Christian Center, received 19 provisional votes, bumping to his vote total to 889.  Bowser received 19 provisional votes and a total of 867 votes. Ralph McKinney received six provisional votes and a total of 471 votes.

Two members of the Board of Elections and Williams' wife and daughter Barbara and Adande Williams were the only visitors present as the board's interim director, Michael Perry, fed the approved votes into the ballot tabulator.

“In it to win it,” Barbara and Adande Williams repeated as they left the Board of Elections. 

City Council candidate Donald Hughes (right) said Saturday that he is not in any alliance with Mayor candidate Sylvester Williams.

Hughes was responding to comments made by council candidate John Tarantino, who said Williams' campaign workers were distributing sample ballots with Williams's name marked along with Hughes's and council candidates Solomon Burnette and Victoria Williams. (See item below.)

"I have not authorized my name to be used on any sample ballot," Hughes wrote in an email to Bull's Eye.

"Any citizen has a right to support me, but I want to make it completely clear that my campaign has not authorized any individual or campaign to use my name on a sample ballot. Mr. Tarantino stated, 'the candidates scrambled and formed an alliance' — this is completely false. I have not formed an alliance with any candidate in this year's election. It is clear that Mr. Tarantino's endorsement and accusations are a desperate final attempt to gain votes ahead of Tuesday's primary election."

City Council candidate John Tarantino (right) said this afternoon that he's endorsing County Commissioner Joe Bowser for mayor in Tuesday's primary election.

"I'm aligned with Bowser and encouraging my friends to vote for Bowser," he said.

Bowser (below), who has more than a year left on his commissioner's term, is challenging incumbent Mayor Bill Bell. Retired salesman Ralph McKinney and minister Sylvester Williams are also in the race.

Tarantino is one of seven candidates for three at-large Council seats. Tuesday's voting will eliminate one, as well as two mayoral candidates, leaving the survivors to face off in the Nov. 8 general election.

Tarantino said he decided to come out for Bowser after Williams's campaign began passing out sample ballots encouraging votes for three black City Council candidates: Solomon Burnette, Donald Hughes and Victoria Peterson.

"The worst thing that can happen is nothing," he said.

Tarantino said he was miffed because he had given Williams support, including financial support, in a past campaign for City Council.

Bowser is also black, as is Bell; Tarantino is white, and said Williams, Burnette, Hughes and Peterson appeared to have formed a bloc after the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, one of Durham's major political organizations, decided against making endorsements for the primary.

Williams, Hughes and Peterson have said the Durham Committee's political subcommittee recommended them for endorsement, but the full Committee did not accept the recommendation. Peterson said the political subcommittee also favored Burnette, but Burnette declined to comment.

"The candidates scrambled and formed an alliance," Tarantino said.

The People's Alliance, another major Durham PAC, has endorsed Bell along with council incumbents Eugene Brown and Diane Catotti and former School Board member Steve Schewel. An Alliance campaign mailer promotes the four as a team in the elections.

Brown, Catotti and Schewel are white.
 

The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People picked no favorites at its endorsement meeting Saturday, Committee Chairwoman  Lavonia Allison (right) said this afternoon.

"No endorsement for the mayor race, no endorsement for City Council," she said.

Mayoral candidate Sylvester Williams released a statement Saturday, saying that he had been endorsed by the group's political committee, though not by the Durham Committee as a whole.

That was incorrect and improper, Allison said, because under Durham Committee rules any endorsement requires the full Committee's agreement. No committee make take a position on its own, she said.

"No standing committee is autonomous," said Allison, and endorsement announcements may be made only by the Durham Committee's chairman.

Mayor candidate Sylvester Williams (right) took issue with state Rep. Larry Hall's statement that an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage would hurt efforts to attract and create jobs.

In an email statement, Williams, a Durham minister, called Hall’s comments “reprehensible.”

“Jobs were created before there was talk about an amendment to the State constitution to ban gay marriage and jobs will be created afterwards. His remarks are disingenuous and any reasonable person can see through the smokescreen of deception,” Williams wrote.
   
“To tie the economy to an issue that has long been the bastion of the church puts Representative Hall in an  uncomfortable position of trying to speak for both the church and the state,” Williams concluded.
 

From correspondent Virginia Bridges

Durham mayoral candidate Sylvester Williams has also applied to fill Becky Heron’s vacated county commissioner’s seat.

Williams’ applications was submitted before the county’s Aug. 8 deadline, but delayed because the county’s system put it in the spam folder, according to the board’s clerk Michelle Parker- Evans.

Williams will compete with nine others seeking the position: Anita Daniels, Hampton Dellinger (endorsed by the Durham County Democratic Party), Wendy Jacobs, Pamela Karriker, Tonya Kemble, Rickey Padgett, Jane Redoble, Jane Volland and William Wilson.  

Meanwhile, in the mayor’s race Williams faces incumbent Bill Bell, Durham County Commissioner Joe Bowser, and Ralph McKinney, a retired salesman.

Candidates seeking to fill Heron’s spot will each have at least 22 minutes to sell their strengths to the four sitting county board members during an interview session  Sept. 6.  

Starting at 1 p.m. Sept. 6, a moderator will give each of the 10 candidates five minutes to make an opening statement explaining why they want to run, credentials, leadership style, and community relationships that will help them accomplish their goals if they are appointed to the seat.  

Then candidates will be asked to answer six to eight questions that relate to education, budgets, economic development and policies.  Candidate’s answers to each question will be limited to two minutes, but commissioners can ask follow up questions.

Candidates will then be given two more minutes to make a closing statement.

Commissioners said they planned to discuss the candidates and possibly narrow down the field at a Sept. 7 already scheduled worksession and possibly before or during the board’s regular Sept. 12 meeting.

Durham County Commissioner Joe Bowser is running for mayor.

Bowser, who has more than a year left on his current county term, filed this morning to challenge incumbent Mayor Bill Bell. Bowser followed Sylvester Williams, an East Durham pastor, who filed earlier today.

Filing for the 2011 municipal election closed at noon with four candidates for mayor and eight for three at-large seats on the City Council. Ralph McKinney Jr., who ran unsuccessfuly for Council in 2001, entered the race for mayor on Thursday.

Bell is seeking a sixth consecutive two-year term.

Donald Hughes, a previous, but unsuccessful, candidate for City Council and School Board, also filed this morning. He completed the Council field, joining private citizens Alice Bailey, Solomon Burnette, Victoria Peterson, Steve Schewel and John Tarantino.

Two-term incumbent Council members Eugene Brown and Diane Catotti are also in the race.

Durham holds a primary election Oct. 11. The general election is Nov. 8.

Three more candidates entered the field for Durham's city elections today, and a fourth announced he will be going in.

Ralph McKinney, who made an unsuccessful run for City Council 10 years ago, became the first challenger to Mayor Bill Bell's bid for re-election to a sixth consecutive term.

McKinney filed as a candidate today, while Sylvester Williams, an East Durham minister who ran unsuccessfully for city council in 2009, announced he will file for mayor Friday morning.

Solomon Burnette, a political newcomer, and John Tarantino, who has previously run for City Council, School Board and state Senate — without success — filed for at-large Council seats.

Their addition makes seven candidates vying for three at-large seats, including two-term incumbents Eugene Brown and Diane Catotti. Candidate filing closes at noon Friday.

Long-serving city councilman Howard Clement got a second challenger Wednesday when Sylvester Williams, pastor at the Assembly at Durham Christian Center and a vocal opponent of the East End Connector highway project, filed for the Ward 2 seat in this fall's city election.

Williams joins Libertarian Pary county chairman Matt Drew in opposing Clement, who has served on the city council since 1983.

As of Thursday morning, Ward 3 council member Mike Woodard and Mayor Bill Bell had no opposition for re-election, and no one had filed for the Ward 1 seat currently held by Mayor Pro Tem Cora Cole McFadden.