Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles to run for reelection. She’s ready to ‘finish what we started’
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles announced Monday she will defend her seat in the city election this year.
“As mayor, I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished by working together. Let’s finish what we started,” Lyles said in a video announcement that cites her work bringing in new jobs, affordable housing and police and community relations.
It features archival photos and video from a previous mayoral announcement. It includes people talking positively about her tenure and video of scenes around Charlotte.
If she wins, she’ll serve a fourth term in the city’s top elected spot, guiding the council in policy making. Official filing for candidacy with the Mecklenburg Board of Elections starts July 7, and the primary election is Sept. 12.
So far, no other candidates have opened a campaign to run for Charlotte mayor, according to the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections. The city is having back-to-back city elections in 2022 and 2023 because of delays caused by the 2020 Census.
In an interview with The Charlotte Observer last week, Democratic political consultant Dan McCorkle described Lyles as a political powerhouse in the Queen City. After Charlotte saw six mayors between 2013 and 2017, McCorkle said she stabilized city government. She’s worked for the city of Charlotte since 1975 and has a “no drama” approach to governing, he said.
“This person would have to be super human to beat Vi Lyles in 2023 in the primary. In the general, there’s no Republican that could do it,” said McCorkle, who’s consulted more than 80 Democratic campaigns in the Charlotte area. “Billy Graham gets resurrected; it’d still be tough.”
Under Lyles’ tenure as mayor, the city has allocated $150 million toward affordable housing subsidies and passed a new unified development ordinance, which sets planning rules and guidelines citywide.
Who is Vi Lyles?
Lyles, a South Carolina native, studied political science at Queens University and went on to receive a master’s degree in public administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Before becoming an elected official, she served as a budget analyst, budget director and an assistant city manager. Today, the city allocates hundreds of millions of dollars annually to a budget evolved from the city’s fist capital improvement plan she helped create.
Lyles was elected to the Charlotte City Council in 2013 and named mayor pro tem by her colleagues two years later.
In 2017, she successfully ran for mayor against Jennifer Roberts and led the Queen City through three terms, a global pandemic and a racial reckoning.
The most contentious part of her tenure as mayor, she said earlier this month, was bringing the Republican National Convention to Charlotte in 2020, a move that sparked backlash during a politically fraught time in American history.
“Our city is going to be a place where we’re going to welcome everyone … if we could do the Democratic convention, we could do the Republican convention … in the end I think we did it the right way,” Lyles said.
Lyles received 69% of the vote against first-time candidate Republican Stephanie de Sarachaga-Bilbao in the 2022 election.
