INDY October 15, 2025

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill October 15, 2025

Think your house is haunted?

Onlyphantoms can help.

By Jane Porter, p. 21

ALSO INSIDE: CARY & ORANGE COUNTY ENDORSEMENTS

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill Vol. 42 No. 21 | October 15, 2025

Contents News 5

The business model for local TV news is breaking in the digital age. Here's how WRAL is facing a precarious future. BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL

8

What exactly does the Durham City Council do? BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW

10

Council members in Apex are voicing concerns about the mayor's handling of a board nomination, a utility billing issue, and other dustups. BY BRYAN ANDERSON

14

Does Raleigh have a shot at scoring a Major League Baseball team?

BY ERIC FREDERICK

17

The INDY's endorsements for elections in Cary and Orange County. BY INDY STAFF

Culture 21

My 1900s Oakwood home has all the hallmarks of a haunted house. To learn more, I called in the experts: A paranormal investigative group called Onlyphantoms.

BY JANE PORTER

25

Gene Nichol's new book encourages North Carolina progressives to get "up off the mat" and fight. BY JASMINE GALLUP

26

Burning Coal Theatre produces a powerful series of My Name Is Rachel Corrie readings across ten months. BY SARAH EDWARDS

Regulars 3

4

Backtalk

Op-ed

28

Calendar My Name is Rachel Corrie draws directly from the diaries and emails of the American activist who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 (see story on page 26). IMAGE

Cover A team of more than a dozen people, Onlyphantoms conducts paranormal investigations across North Carolina. ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

COURTESY BURNING COAL THEATRE

We Made This Publisher Editorial

Staff Writers Lena Geller Justin Laidlaw Chase Pellegrini de Paur

Editor-in-Chief Sarah Willets

Report For America Corps Reporter Chloe Courtney Bohl

Wake County Editor Jane Porter

Contributors Mariana Fabian, Jasmine Gallup, Desmera Gatewood, Tasso Hartzog, Elliott Harrell, Brian Howe, Jordan Lawrence, Elim Lee, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Cy Neff, Andrea Richards, Barry Yeoman

John Hurld

Culture Editor Sarah Edwards

2 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska Editorial Interns Eva Flowe Kennedy Thomason

Creative Creative Director Nicole Pajor Moore

Advertising Publisher John Hurld Director of Revenue Mathias Marchington Director of Operations Chelsey Koch Account Representative Jessica Schell

Circulation

Berry Media Group

Membership/ subscriptions

John Hurld Mathias Marchington

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BACKTALK In our October 1 print edition, we published an op-ed co-authored by Durham City Council member Javiera Caballero and affordable housing finance specialist Ramsay Ritchie arguing for building more housing, both market rate and affordable, to address affordable housing needs in Durham. (The piece followed several other op-eds debating solutions to this issue, all available to read at indyweek.com.) Readers shared their takes.

From reader CHRIS by email: In response to the abundance of Abundance™ astroturfing at INDY op-eds, Triangle-area municipal candidates, burgeoning 501(c)4s, and the neoliberal politics as vocation apparatus lost in the wilderness: Corporations will maximize profits without regulation, not production.

To help working people of the Triangle that live in the Triangle here are some alternatives: 1) Ban hedge fund, private equity, or other corporations from buying single-family residential properties in city limits.

2) Excise tax on Air BNBs within a certain district.

3) Excise tax on out-of-state 2nd single-family residencies (and associated LLCs).

4) Excise tax on in-state 4th and 5th and so on single-family residencies (and associated LLCs).

5) Expand eligibility to minor and substantial rehabilitation repair program to under 62 years old.

6) Divest city pensions from Real Estate Investment Trusts.

Shelter is wildly speculated on but is far from the only victim. It’s almost every sector determining health to include hospitals and groceries. Predatory equity needs us on our phones,

Conrad Tao Fri, Oct 24 at 7:30PM | Baldwin Auditorium

lonely, sick, and isolated above all else. And when there is no sector left to pillage, go get your Gravestones by Blackstone.

From reader KATIE ROSS by email: Housing in Durham is expensive but it is no longer a supply issue. “Affordable housing” is the “Abracadabra” of the development community. Whenever developers want anything approved, from their self-serving [Simplifying Codes for Affordable Development] amendments to the upcoming universal upzoning [Unified Development Ordinance] revision, they just utter the magic word, affordable. More new units have been approved than [the Office of Budget and Management] and Durham Planning Department have projected are needed up to the year 2050. Multi-family rental units have had vacancy rates near and above 12 percent for at least a couple of years (that’s a glut, btw).

Turning Durham over to the evelopers has not worked to produce the affordable housing which is supposed to be the justification for all the environmental devastation that rabid development has and is inflicting on Durham.

Award-winning pianist Conrad Tao traces the impact of American music on the work of Sergei Rachmaninoff at the height of the jazz age.

“The kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music” –New York Magazine

Upcoming Highlights include...

Nov 2 | Baldwin Auditorium

Leonard Elschenbroich, cello with Alexei Grynyuk, piano

Nov 14–15 | Reynolds Industries Theater

Is It Thursday Yet?

WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD? indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @INDYWeekNC @indyweek

Tickets $10–$35 dukearts.org October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

3

OP-ED

Durham Needs a Tenant Protection Ordinance The Riverside High School Affordable Housing Club advocates for policies that would protect tenants living in dangerous conditions, and hold their landlords accountable.

Invoice Rent Due

BY MILO GRABER backtalk@indyweek.com

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

L

ast week, Durham City Council debated a tenant protection ordinance during its work session. Modeled after an ordinance in Charlotte, it would prohibit landlords from collecting rent if a housing unit has “imminently dangerous conditions,” such as unsafe drinking water, severe pest infestation, or no functioning toilet. In Charlotte, legal aid attorneys use this ordinance every day to help low-income renters defend themselves against eviction and improve the living standards in their homes.

According to a 2022 Community Health Assessment Survey, affordable housing is the number one concern of residents living in Durham County. At least 46.9 percent of people living in Durham are cost-burdened, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their total income on housing. The eviction rate in Durham is high: 15.7 per every 100 households each year. The City of Durham already recognized this problem by passing the $95 million Affordable Housing Bond in 2019 and investing in the Eviction Diversion Program, which provides legal resources to families facing eviction.

But Durham can and should do more to assist low-income residents. By passing this ordinance, we can give tenants and their attorneys a powerful tool to enforce basic standards of habitability in their homes and even the playing field in eviction court. We just have to follow the lead of 4 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

three other North Carolina municipalities: Charlotte, Pittsboro, and Pineville.

During the last year, the Riverside High School Affordable Housing Club has promoted this ordinance in Durham. We attended eviction court to watch proceedings and interviewed attorneys. We wrote a report about how the ordinance works in Charlotte, and we’ve built community support for its passage in Durham by meeting with community groups and city councilors. We’re doing this work because of the impact of housing costs and evictions on our classmates and neighborhoods. Housing instability stresses families and leads kids to miss school. It even forces students to change schools midyear.

We’ve received a lot of support. At the council’s September 18 work session, a retired tenants’ attorney, Jack Holtzman, offered public comment in support of the ordinance. He told a story about how he once used the Charlotte ordinance to file a class-action lawsuit against an out-of-state slumlord who rented out properties with dangerous conditions. The tenants settled the lawsuit for $500,000. Holtzman argued that the ordinance would strengthen the ability of private attorneys to be “stronger tenant advocates” in Durham.

Nick MacLeod, the executive director of the North Carolina Tenants Union, also spoke in favor of the proposal. He said, “This would be a really valuable, critical

Milo Graber. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT

addition in Durham to protect tenants living in unbelievably dangerous conditions.”

Donna Bautista, a resident at JFK Towers, shared details about some of the unlivable conditions in the public housing complex where she lives.

We’ve also heard some legal concerns from the city attorney’s office. Fortunately, it seems clear that the city has the power to enact this policy. It’s been part of the housing code in Charlotte since 2007,

in Pineville since 2008, and in Pittsboro since 2022. They’ve never been challenged by the state. While the ordinance is not enforced directly by the municipalities, it is enforced by the courts after tenants and their lawyers raise it as a defense against eviction for nonpayment. Over the summer, the legislative analyst’s office in the General Assembly looked at the ordinance and said, “It appears that tenants can raise a violation of [the Charlotte ordinance] as a defense to eviction.” The two attorneys who spoke at public comment at the work session agreed, as did Chelsea Cook, a city councilor who is also a tenants’ lawyer.

Durham should adopt this ordinance. It will make landlords more likely to maintain their properties in safe and livable condition because of the risk of losing rent payments if they don’t. For renters who endure substandard housing, it will save them money and give them a tool to enforce their rights. Finally, the ordinance can slow down eviction proceedings, allowing people to keep roofs over their heads longer, preventing homelessness. While this ordinance will not solve Durham’s affordable housing crisis, it will make a significant difference for many of our residents. W Milo Graber is a senior at Riverside High School and the founder of the Riverside High School Affordable Housing Club.

NEWS

North Carolina

Breaking News Television viewership and ad revenue are down nationally, and locally owned stations are fading. Jimmy Goodmon, the fourth-generation president of WRAL-TV and Capitol Broadcasting, confronts a precarious future.

BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL chloe@indyweek.com

Anchors deliver the 4 p.m. news at the WRAL studio in Raleigh PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

P

osted above the double-door entryway to WRAL-TV’s Raleigh headquarters is a quote from founder A.J. Fletcher: “To inform the public without bias or favor is this station’s highest duty.”

Behind those doors is a warren of conference rooms, studios, control rooms, and a large, open-plan newsroom.

James Goodmon Jr., the fourth-generation president of WRAL and its family-owned parent company, Capitol Broadcasting, strides down hallways filled with plaques and memorabilia commemorating the station’s impact on local journalism.

Inside the main control room, he looks on as a group of producers seated before an array of 15 monitors speak calmly but rapidly into their headsets, executing the complicated, minute-by-minute choreography that is the 4 p.m news. Next door in the studio, he watches as a pair of anchors prepare to go live, a “Breaking News” banner scrolling across the screen in front of their desk.

A few minutes later and one floor down, Goodmon Jr. sits at a long conference table and absentmindedly rakes his hands across his face, pushing his rectangular glasses onto his forehead.

“I’m really proud of what you saw up there, and I don’t really care if other people think that or not,” he says, letting out an exhale somewhere between a wry laugh and an expression of defiance.

He speaks about the family business in epic terms: “This is a war,” he told INDY and The Assembly in a recent interview. “This is a big battle that we’re fighting every day.”

Goodmon Jr. is battling for advertising dollars against

bigger, richer competitors. He’s fighting to hold his audience’s attention amid stiff competition from social media, streaming services, and AI-generated Google search results.

And he’s in a race against time, trying to predict the next trends and technological advancements in media to keep his station profitable and relevant.

Much has been written about the death of print news in the digital age, but the business model for local TV news is breaking, too. Viewership has steadily decreased since 2016, according to data from the Pew Research Center, and advertising revenue has trended down as well, notwithstanding bumps from political ads during election years.

Profit margins are slimmer than they were 30 years ago, to the point where the vast majority of local stations have been bought up by a handful of corporations. Of the local ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates in the nation’s top 25 biggest media markets (Raleigh is No. 22), NBC affiliate WRAL is the only one that isn’t owned by a corporate parent like Sinclair, Tegna, Nexstar, or Disney.

The last five years have thrown additional hurdles in WRAL’s path, including a transition to a new chief executive and a string of high-profile departures from the newsroom and anchor desk.

There have been casualties in Goodmon Jr.’s “big battle”— longtime employees who say they were laid off or offered steeply reduced contracts, and others who left the station abruptly and without explanation. They say WRAL is losing some of the family culture that distinguished it from corporate-owned competitors and helped keep viewers loyal.

Asked about the departures, Goodmon Jr. said some

staffers had been resistant to change.

“This isn’t a kindergarten,” he said. “In order to succeed, you gotta adapt, you gotta change. And you can either embrace that and become curious … which is what we want to do, or you can resist it. We’ve probably been overly considerate as it relates to overlooking those that have been resistant over time.”

In spite of the headwinds, WRAL is still relatively well-positioned. It has a newsroom staff of 143 and a host of profitable companies under the Capitol Broadcasting umbrella to cushion the TV station against financial stumbles.

The station does consequential political and investigative reporting, and it regularly wins coveted regional Emmy and Murrow awards. Its role as a public good has never been clearer as other local news sources shrink and disappear.

WRAL makes its own decisions and, to some extent, controls its destiny. Sinclair and Nexstar recently told their more than 60 ABC affiliate stations (including WXLV in Winston-Salem and WCTI in New Bern) not to air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s death; Goodmon Jr. has no faraway corporate boss to answer to. (Sinclair and Nexstar said late last month that they were bringing Kimmel back.)

“WRAL is—both in terms of its record through the years doing news and its economics—atypical of the whole universe of local stations,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization. “Very few are that dominant in a market, and very few have as big a commitment, at least historically, to doing some pretty ambitious news.”

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

5

The business model may be changing underfoot, but Goodmon Jr., 48, who’s better known around the station as Jimmy, is sanguine about WRAL’s prospects.

“I really want Capitol Broadcasting to be doing local news in Raleigh 100 years from now,” he said. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what device it’ll be on. I don’t know if it’ll be here or Mars. But … at the end of the day when the dust settles, if we’re not here, they’ll find me with my knuckles broken.”

Prescient Bets Fletcher, who founded Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC), was Goodmon Jr.’s great-grandfather. He began amassing local media properties in the 1930s with the purchase of an AM radio station. In 1956, he branched into television, securing the license to Channel 5 and founding WRAL-TV. By the time of Fletcher’s death in 1979, CBC also owned the Tobacco Radio Network, the North Carolina News Network, Capitol Publications, Capitol Broadcasting Network, and Seeburg Music Library, Inc. Fletcher also had an eponymous charitable foundation and a slate of broadcasting awards to his name.

He was succeeded as CBC president in 1966 by his eldest son, Fred, who in addition to serving as president of CBC until his retirement was a community fixture in Raleigh: He was elected to the city council and chaired various Wake County parks boards for decades.

James Fletcher Goodmon Sr., Fred’s nephew, took over as president of Capitol Broadcasting in 1975. Goodmon Sr. made prescient bets on emerging technologies: WRAL was the first TV station in North Carolina to get a news helicopter (1979) and a satellite truck (1984); the first in the Triangle to launch a website (1996); and the first in the world to air an all-high definition newscast (the 5 p.m. news on October 13, 2000).

“They were possibly the leading station in the entire country, certainly one of a handful, that was very aggressive in moving to digital outputs,” said Lee Meredith, an adjunct instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and former general manager of several television stations around the Southeast.

WRAL’s early move to digital involved a substantial investment that Goodmon’s corporate counterparts—motivated by their bottom lines—were reluctant to make.

“Back then, every local TV station … just made money hand over fist and tried not to give any to their employees if they didn’t have to,” recalled Ed Crump, who joined WTVD/ABC11 as a reporter in 1984 and stayed for 37 years.

The calculus was different for WRAL, Meredith said.

“One of the biggest pros of local ownership is a focus on serving this local community,” he said. “They can decide how much profit they’re going to make and how much service they’re going to provide. In a big company, that’s not going to be a local decision.”

The investments paid off: Under Goodmon Sr., the station was widely lauded as the best in the region, beating out its neighbors WTVD/ABC11 (owned by Disney) and WNCN/CBS17 (owned by Nexstar).

“We may have been breaking the same story, but more 6 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

people were watching [WRAL], and that was a fact,” said Dwayne Ballen, a sports anchor for Channel 11 in the 1980s and ’90s.

Also during Goodmon Sr.’s tenure as CBC president, the company bought the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team, sprouted a real estate division, and redeveloped Durham’s abandoned American Tobacco factory campus into a multiuse district. Jimmy’s brother, Michael, runs the company’s real estate and sports divisions.

The elder Goodmon wanted Jimmy to learn every part of the broadcasting business he would one day lead. So in the 1990s, Jimmy started working as a camera operator for WRAL’s 5 a.m. newscast. He was 16 years old.

From there, Goodmon Jr. bounced between different areas of CBC’s increasingly vast network of businesses, managing a handful of radio stations, acquiring new properties for the company, and leading CBC’s New Media Group. In 2017, he became president and COO of CBC. This May, he officially took over the CEO title from his father, who continues to serve as chairman of CBC’s board of directors.

“Dad, to me, is the GOAT,” Goodmon Jr. said, using the acronym for Greatest Of All Time. “Everything I learned about what we’re up to comes from him. … He sort of lives rent-free in my mind and heart all the time.”

But Goodmon Jr. is operating in a different media landscape than his father. The generation of TV watchers who tuned in like clockwork for WRAL’s evening news is aging.

Younger people are much more likely to get their news from websites, apps, and social media than television, according to Pew data.

“Our audiences are changing so fast,” Goodmon Jr. said.

“It’s definitely become a more complex business in order

to serve those needs.”

In 1995, WRAL broadcast four hours of local news each weekday. Today, that number has ballooned to 11 hours across WRAL and WRAZ, the local Fox affiliate that Capitol Broadcasting also owns. Then there’s WRAL News Plus, a 24/7 streaming channel that provides continual news and weather updates. Not to mention the mobile app, website, and multiple radio stations pumping out their own feeds of local news.

More local news sounds great on its face, but there are a couple of potential problems with this strategy. For one, WRAL is still an advertising-based company, and digital advertising is far less profitable than TV advertising—Meredith called it “trading analog dollars for digital dimes.”

Plus, WRAL doesn’t seem to have expanded its reporting staff in proportion to its new multiplatform endeavors.

The station would not tell INDY and The Assembly how staffing levels have changed in the last decade, but former employees say they watched their departments shrink even as they were asked to produce more.

Goodmon Jr. pushed back against the idea that recent departures at WRAL are anything more than the usual churn all companies experience: “We’ve had a lot of people who have left in my tenure. How I would compare that to now is, it’s the exact same as it’s always been,” he said.

Former staff tell a different story. INDY and The Assembly spoke to several longtime employees who said they were laid off or offered steeply reduced contracts. Others said they saw the writing on the wall and left of their own accord for new opportunities. They said the station feels less like a family and more like a business than ever before— nothing irregular in the competitive world of local broadcasting, but a departure from the WRAL of decades past.

Jimmy Goodmon poses for a portrait at the WRAL studio in Raleigh PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

High-profile Departures Last month Laura Leslie, WRAL’s capitol bureau chief, announced she was leaving the station to become the new editor at NC Newsline, a Raleigh-based nonprofit news site. Leslie spent nearly 15 years at WRAL and became one of North Carolina’s most authoritative voices on state politics.

She declined to comment to INDY and The Assembly about why she decided to make the move, but wrote in an announcement that “at a time when so many traditional media outlets are shrinking, [NC Newsline’s parent] States Newsroom is expanding its coverage of policy debates that affect readers’ everyday lives.” She added that she’s “grateful to WRAL for the opportunity the station gave me and the many skills I learned during my time there.”

Following Leslie’s announcement, WRAL news director Mike Friedrich told the News & Observer she “has been an important contributor for several years, but we are proud of our NC Capitol Team already in place.”

Some WRAL veterans considered that disrespectful to Leslie.

Leslie is not the only recent high-profile departure. In March, visual design director Shan Zhong, a 37-time regional Emmy award winner, left after almost 19 years. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Enterprise executive producer Ashley Talley also left in March; she, too, declined a request for comment. Talley oversaw Murrow- and Emmy-award winning work during her nearly six years at WRAL and now works for Tegna.

Anchors Julian Grace and Aaron Thomas both departed the station abruptly this summer after each worked there for six years. Thomas did not respond to a request for comment, but has taken an anchor/ reporter job at WLWT in Cincinnati. Grace told INDY and The Assembly that when his contract with WRAL ended in June, he decided to take a break from journalism to promote his new book.

News anchor Debra Morgan, a 32-year newsroom veteran, also left WRAL this summer and did not respond to inquiries about why and what’s next for her.

Beloved lead anchor David Crabtree, 19-year news director Rick Gall, politics reporter Travis Fain, reporting veteran Amanda Lamb, and general manager Joel Davis all moved on for new opportunities or retired within the last two years. Although they left by choice (Crabtree was 72 years old when he left to become CEO at PBS North Carolina), their colleagues said the loss of institutional memory is a blow for the station, whose staff is leaning younger and less experienced.

Gilbert Baez reported from Fayetteville for 17 years until late 2024, when he was told his contract wasn’t being renewed.

“They had every right to do that. I had 17 great years with them,” Baez said. “I’m sure WRAL and WTVD and WNCN, everyone is making adjustments right now. That may seem shocking, but it really shouldn’t be.”

Arri Woodhouse, an associate producer who started at WRAL in 2023, resigned in April 2024 to take a broadcasting job in Charlotte at Queen City News (WJZY). “In all the newsrooms that I’ve ever worked in,” she said, “you will see somebody one day, and then you’ll come in the next day, and there’s an email saying, ‘This person is no longer with the company.’”

Still, Woodhouse found the departures at WRAL jarring.

“They got rid of all of our administration at the front desk,” she said. “And a few other people that I wasn’t exactly close with, but it was definitely felt when they left, because their responsibilities fall on other people. … It definitely led to people being overworked.”

Six former employees requested anonymity to speak candidly with INDY and The Assembly. Almost universally, they acknowledged that WRAL is up against the same headwinds as the entire TV news industry and that turnover is normal, but they expressed discomfort that longtime employees were leaving against their will or, in some cases, without giving any explanation to the staff.

Asked about the departures, Goodmon Jr. was adamant that “we haven’t made any mistakes” and that the few times WRAL has terminated a contract, it was for cause.

He also said that the news team has grown compared to 10 years ago.

“We compete with Disney right next door, and Sinclair, and then there’s little old redneck Capitol Broadcasting Company,” he told INDY and The Assembly. “And what do you think [the others] are doing? They’re cutting without reinvestment.”

Jeff Gravley spent most of his three-decade journalism career at WRAL. He started in 1985 as an intern and worked his way up to become a sports photographer, then a reporter, and finally a sports anchor.

For a long time, it was a dream job. He covered ACC tournaments, Final Fours, two Super Bowls—the station even sent him to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympics. His coworkers, many of whom he’d worked with for decades, felt like family. Together, they were producing some of the most-watched, highest-quality local news and sports coverage in the Triangle. Gravley was named WRAL’s lead sports anchor in 2008 and racked up seven regional Emmy awards.

The control room during the 4 p.m. news at the WRAL studio in Raleigh PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

In summer 2019, he was called into a meeting with the station’s general manager and news director. They told Gravley they were terminating his contract early and offering him a new one at half his previous salary. There were no issues with his performance, Gravley remembers them telling him during the meeting. This was purely a financial decision.

Gravley ended up turning down the new contract and leaving WRAL—and journalism—later that year. He now works for the NC State athletics department.

He believes he got out at the right time: His early years on the job coincided with WRAL’s financial and ratings heyday, but by the time he left, things weren’t so rosy.

The sports staff was traveling less, getting less air time, and had shrunk considerably.

“It was a gut punch,” Gravley recalled.

“It happens in business. But when it happens to you at a place with a reputation like WRAL, it kind of hits different. I felt like I had done all the right things, worked through the ranks, paid my dues … and then all of a sudden, boom, the rug is pulled out.”

Next Generation When INDY visited WRAL recently for a newsroom tour, rain was slanting down in sheets outside. Severe weather means a busy day of breaking news (WRAL has seven meteorologists) and live updates for the news team, and the building was hum-

ming with activity.

Goodmon Jr., dressed unfussily in khakis and a navy Durham Bulls-branded polo shirt, traded greetings with camera operators and producers as he loped down long corridors past banks of monitors.

He stopped to point out a shiny new piece of tech: an automatic teleprompter that learns individual anchors’ speech patterns and customizes the pace of its scroll.

Back in the day, Goodmon Jr. used to operate a manual version of the teleprompter during live newscasts.

“That position that I was in isn’t here anymore. We don’t have a teleprompter operator anymore,” he said. “But think about all the things that we’re doing now that we weren’t doing.”

In one studio space, a reporter in a suit and a teenage camera operator in a headset were filming a traffic report. After they finished, Goodmon Jr. ambled up to the operator and started ribbing him. “It looked a little bit shaky in the last shot,” he teased.

The young camera operator was none other than Goodmon Jr.’s eldest son, Fletcher, who is 16. The presumptive heir to the Capitol Broadcasting empire blushed as his dad leaned in for an awkward forehead kiss.

“There’s nobody who wants things not to change more than me,” Goodmon Jr. said later that day. “However, I also realized very early in my life, that’s like talking about unicorns. Everything is going to change.” W Jane Porter contributed reporting.

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

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NEWS

Durham County

A Durham City Council Explainer With municipal elections underway in Durham, here’s a primer on the functions, powers and limitations of the council.

BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

I

t’s been two decades since I sat in a high school civics class (dear God), but I don’t remember cramming for any tests on local government procedure. Most kids learn about George Washington’s cherry tree before they learn the name of their city’s municipal leader.

In Durham, residents must parse through an added layer of confusion to understand local politics: it’s not always clear what falls in the jurisdiction of the City of Durham or of its close collaborator, Durham County.

This week, Durham voters head back to the polls for the start of general election early voting to decide the final winners for mayor and three city council seats.

While you contemplate whom you’re voting for, or perhaps you might be crazy enough to consider local leadership yourself one day, here’s a primer on city council, what power the council has, and places where council power is limited.

The basics Durham City Council members are elected to four-year terms. There are three ward seats and three at-large seats, with their elections staggered. Candidates must reside in the ward for which they are seeking office, but voters select candidates in all three ward races.

The mayor, however, is elected every two years. Durham has a weak-mayor system, meaning the mayor has almost no more official power than the rest of the city council; their vote counts equally. The mayor does preside over council meetings and gets asked to participate in more photo ops than their colleagues, so there’s that.

8 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

The City of Durham, along with more than 50 percent of cities nationwide, uses a council-manager system, which civics experts liken to a typical corporate structure: voters (stockholders) elect members of the city council (board of directors) and the mayor (chairman of the board), who hire the city manager (chief administrative officer).

Main functions The city council sets policies and enacts resolutions, appoints members to volunteer boards, and approves government contracts as well as the annual budget each year.

But city staff, with the city manager at the helm, are in charge of most day-to-day government functions, including services like public safety, transportation, and parks and recreation. Council may be the final arbiter, but city staff are the taskmasters, developing budgets and ordinances for city council approval.

If you’ve slogged through as many city council meetings as I have, you know that one of the main issues that council deliberates on is whether to annex land, either from the county or a neighboring municipality like Chapel Hill, into the corporate city limits, which entitles property owners to services like water and sewer, and potentially expands the city’s public transportation network.

In addition to annexing land, the city council can approve or deny rezoning requests that allow for different uses of existing property. If someone wants to repurpose a former industrial warehouse into hipster apartments, they need city council approval to change the zoning designation from industrial to residential. The rezoning process is

often when local residents have the most power to voice their opinions about a project.

The city council can put bonds on the ballot, like it did in 2019, to help raise money that the city reinvests in the construction of affordable housing projects. Local officials can also make publicly owned land available for projects, giving the city more capacity to get affordable units built.

Taxation The city council levies taxes to pay for city services. Every property owner is subject to property taxes, while commercial businesses incur sales tax and, for hospitality businesses like hotels, an additional occupancy tax. Durham County also administers its own taxes and is responsible for setting the tax base through the property assessment and valuation process.

The county decides how much your property is worth.

The city and county then decide the rate of taxation on that property. If your tax bill goes up, you should send your complaints to the county tax assessment office before showing up to city hall.

Limitations At city hall, you might hear councilors ask about affordable housing “proffers” during a typical rezoning case, and in response, a representative might say, “We’ve set aside 10 units for affordable housing at 60 percent AMI for 20 years.”

How they arrive at those exact figures is a question for an

Durham City Hall pictured on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Durham. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

engineer or land use lawyer, but requiring affordable housing as part of a development (a practice known as inclusionary zoning) is a legal gray area in North Carolina, hence the proffers.

State law doesn’t explicitly prohibit the city council from using inclusionary zoning, but it doesn’t explicitly allow it either.

Chapel Hill has pushed the boundaries, to varied outcomes, but so far its inclusionary zoning policies have not been invalidated.

The state constitution also calls for any tax exemptions, like those for nonprofits and some educational institutions, to be uniformly applied statewide. Durham cannot change or opt out of any tax exemptions, such as the one Duke University enjoys on its academic building properties.

Since last year, a grassroots campaign called Duke Respect Durham—now seemingly subsumed by Durham Rising—has been putting pressure on Duke leadership and local officials to create a PILOT agreement, or payment in lieu of taxes, a voluntary contribution from Duke each year that would support city and county programs like affordable housing and public schools.

The law means local officials have little leverage to force Duke into an agreement, much to the dismay of PILOT advocates.

“The power they may have is the bully pulpit but no legal authority to do so,” says Christopher McLaughlin, professor of public law and government at UNC. Similarly, the North Carolina state constitution restricts how flexible a local jurisdiction can be with taxation. Local governments are prohibited from creating a tiered, or progressive, tax system.

Whether you’re rich or poor, Black or white, married or single, you pay the same property tax rate. The city and county provide a handful of tax assistance programs aimed at low-income families, veterans,

and the elderly, but these programs are by design targeted and don’t reach everyone who could benefit.

Where does the city end and the county begin?

The city council has become increasingly more intertwined with its counterpart, the Board of County Commissioners.

Almost 50,000 people separate the city from the county population; for comparison, over 500,000 separate Raleigh from Wake County. With the city of Durham as the only major municipality in Durham County, no one should be faulted for confusion over who does what and when, where, and how they do it.

The city provides basic services like police, water, maintenance of city streets, and trash pickup, among others. The county is responsible for social services like public health, helps pay for public schools, runs libraries, and oversees the jail.

But the two government bodies collaborate on a number of programs—emergency services, planning and development, and transportation, among others—with shared staff and infrastructure. They go to many of the same meetings and contribute funding to the same projects.

Throughout much of Durham’s history, local officials, policy wonks, and concerned citizens have advocated for the merger of the two governing bodies, given the increasing partnership. The most recent attempt was in 2000. Logistical hurdles have been enough to stave off recent attempts, but as services overlap and the city annexes more county land into the city limits to accommodate Durham’s rapid growth, there could be little distinction left. W

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

9

NEWS

Wake County

Anger in Apex An increasingly strained relationship between Apex’s mayor and town council has left employees demoralized and the burgeoning area’s future unclear.

BY BRYAN ANDERSON backtalk@indyweek.com

A

pex mayor Jacques Gilbert was trying to push through a nomination for the town’s board of adjustment last month.

Normally, the town council would sign off on such appointments with little debate. But on this September 9 night, things were going to be different.

Several council members saw the nominee as someone who had riled up citizens against town staff in the past.

And behind closed doors, they were telling the mayor they’d sink the nomination if he brought it to a vote.

Months earlier, Gilbert had ended debate on the same nomination when it became clear he didn’t have the votes. The kerfuffle prompted the Apex Town Council to update its meeting minutes to reflect that the mayor had apparently violated parliamentary procedures known as Robert’s Rules.

“I requested that he not nominate her so that we didn’t embarrass this person,” councilman Brett Gantt told the INDY. Gantt is one of two outgoing council members who isn’t seeking reelection next month, which has freed him up to be more vocal on such matters than in years past. Now, he and his colleagues are sounding the alarm on a mayor they see as pitting the public against town staff. They also worry a Gilbert-endorsed candidate will make the council more deferential to the mayor.

The two sides continue to butt heads on the response to a cyberattack that decimated the town’s billing system last year, a private parking lot across the street from Apex Friendship High School, and much more. Meanwhile, an INDY records request uncovered questionable reimbursements given to the mayor.

The board of adjustment debate represents the latest in a string of public dustups between a fed-up town council and a mayor known for utilizing the political capital he’s gained through his wide social media following.

10 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

Outside the Town Hall in Apex PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

When Gilbert once again brought the same nominee forward last month, he hoped for a different outcome. If the town council wanted to reject his adjustment board nominee, they’d also have to turn down a different person with whom they had no qualms, as Gilbert had bundled the two nominees together.

This time, however, the council members stepped in to do something few have been willing to publicly: tell the mayor no.

A council member began a motion to split the vote to circumvent the nomination. Gilbert stood up and interrupted.

“We’re going to recess,” Gilbert said. “I need to go to speak with an attorney.”

He banged the gavel and the livestream cut off.

But footage from a backup camera later released publicly showed the frenetic scene that unfolded. The council proceeded in spite of Gilbert, declaring the mayor’s attempt to unilaterally shut down debate out of order.

“There’s unprecedented things going on,” Gilbert said, shuffling through papers.

The town attorney weighed in and rejected Gilbert’s call for a recess. The glaring mayor was left dumbfounded.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Gilbert recalls thinking at the time. “That was the look I had. I was like, ‘Wow, this happened so fast.’”

“A loose cannon” The INDY spoke with 10 past and current town employees and local elected officials, many of whom declined to be

named for fear of retribution. They all described an increasingly hostile relationship among the town’s top brass and a highly demoralized staff.

“It’s kind of like being a child of parents divorcing,” one town employee says.

Another employee compared the mayor to a child throwing a fit at a candy store after a parent denies them something they want. “He throws these spells of outrage because he’s not getting what he wants,” the person says.

“The mayor has been a loose cannon,” a third source adds.

Asked if he knew any town employees who could speak to his defense, Gilbert said he’d spoken “with several staff members” willing to speak on his behalf.

“However, they’re extremely nervous that their names could get back to the town manager or senior staff who have influence over their careers,” he says. “They’ve heard from other employees who have worked with certain council members to attempt to defame my character.”

The INDY offered to provide the same anonymity to protect those individuals. Even so, no town employee came forward to speak favorably of Gilbert.

During a recent phone interview, Gilbert further questioned the timing of the criticisms leveled against him.

“Come on, man, you know, this is election season. The timing is interesting.”

Shortly before this story was published, Gilbert posted a seven-minute video on Facebook downplaying the divides within the town. “No matter what opposition or distractions arise, my focus will remain on the community at large,” he told his followers.

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October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

11

A seal inside the Town Hall in Apex. PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

“There is no process” Town P-cards are usually reserved for lower-level staff to cover small purchases, such as food and gas. Gilbert already has a stipend, and unlike the mayor, no sitting council members have a P-card.

An analysis of the mayor’s P-card purchases since 2024 shows Gilbert paid $375.38 to a porta-potty company, $343.20 to a local arts and crafts store, $402.14 to a hotel in Wilmington, $598.30 to a Hilton hotel, and hundreds of dollars to local restaurants.

Gilbert says he rented two porta-potties for a town event at a park without restrooms, bought backpack tags for elementary school kids taking field trips to the town, and dined and traveled for official town business purposes.

One employee informed of the purchases by the INDY replied, “The porta-potty is certainly a head-scratcher.”

Gilbert clapped back, “To ensure the dignity of our residents, yes, I did it.”

Officials and council members say that while the P-card purchases may not necessarily be illegal, they were questionable.

Gantt says no elected official should have such purchasing power.

“It can be kind of easily abused, so it’s better for none of us to have that,” Gantt 12 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

A historic marker commemorates the now-closed Friendship School near the current Apex Friendship High School site. PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

says. “These things get people in trouble sometimes.”

Others saw a larger concern being a pattern of the mayor reaching unilateral decisions and seeking permission later.

“The mayor has used that card in ways that may be perfectly legal but are at least questionable because those purchases have not gone through the proper control system that we have in place that governs the purchases that we make on behalf of the town,” says town council member Arno Zegerman.

Gilbert says the town’s policies are unclear.

“There is no process,” Gilbert says. “There has never been a process to what they’re talking about. I thought there was trust in the elected officials, which is why anyone can go and look at the P-card transactions and challenge it.”

A lot of headache The mayor’s reimbursement process isn’t the only financial arrangement raising eyebrows.

Gilbert announced at an August 22 news conference this year that he found a resolution that would allow Annie Scott, an Apex resident and property owner, to continue

operating a for-profit parking lot in a residential area across from Apex Friendship High School. Gilbert said the state Department of Transportation signed off on Scott’s continued operations through a special public vehicular access (PVA) designation.

It’s a remedy other town council members see as a false, disingenuous, and unlawful attempt to usurp zoning rules.

Terry Mahaffey, one of the council members, says the lot needs to be rezoned and have fewer cars permitted to ensure student safety. He’s since been in touch with outside experts.

“We do not believe the state’s designation of private property as a PVA preempts local zoning,” Derrick Applewhite, a lobbyist for the North Carolina League of Municipalities, wrote in an August 28 email to Mahaffey.

Scott says she thinks Mahaffey and others are pushing her to rezone for the town’s financial gain and to force her to move. Scott says she’s rented out her yard for extra parking since the school opened in 2015. She charges $300 for the school year, which is $100 more than the Wake County Public School System rate.

“They wanted me to rezone for them [to collect] high taxes,” Scott says.

Meanwhile, around the time of the announcement, Scott donated to the cam-

paign of T.J. Evans, the partner of Gilbert’s daughter, father of his grandson, and the only candidate he’s endorsed thus far for next month’s town council elections.

Campaign finance records show Scott gave Evans’s campaign $900 across three payments on August 16, August 25, and September 1.

“It might not be illegal, but it is ethically not looking good at all,” Zegerman says.

“It is a very, very slippery slope. Annie gets the help from the mayor and T.J. Evans and subsequently makes some substantial donations to T.J.’s campaign. That is a huge red flag.”

Gilbert and Scott deny any suggestion of a quid pro quo. Scott says that while she greatly appreciated the mayor’s assistance, she donated to Evans because of a nephew’s friendship with him.

“If I knew somebody else that was running for the town council that would’ve been as nice to me as T.J. was, I would’ve helped them too,” Scott says.

Gilbert added there was no coordination between him and Scott on the donation.

“What T.J. Evans and Annie Scott have going on, that’s between them,” Gilbert says. “She does not support my campaign.

She has never supported my campaign. But she is a person in this community who can

alludes to a lack of cooperation among the council members and town manager to taking a different approach to solving the billing issue. And as many have pointed out, Gilbert’s assertion that the PVA designation has resolved Scott’s parking dispute is factually untrue.

“I’m frustrated with blatant lies that are being posted to stir up trouble,” Killingsworth says.

Sustained silence

A water tower in downtown Apex PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

contribute to whoever she wants to.”

Evans called the speculation of impropriety “ridiculous” and cited his record of civic engagement and volunteering in Apex. He believes the concerns are being raised to undermine his candidacy.

“I think it’s very clear what’s going on here given the time that we’re in right with the election season coming up,” Evans says.

“It’s a crisis” There’s perhaps no greater disconnect between the mayor and staff than the issue of utility billing.

In July 2024, a cyberattack crushed the town’s billing system, which impacted Apex’s ability to create utility bills showing accurate usage for the months of July and August. The attack couldn’t have come at a worse time.

As the town worked to recover, residents began receiving much higher bills than normal. This increase occurred for a number of reasons, both related and unrelated to the ransomware attack.

First, utility bills are often higher in the summer, as usage of water and air conditioning units noticeably increases. Second, the town adopted a budget a month earlier

that would implement rate increases of 4 percent for water and 14 percent for electricity starting in July. And third, because of the ransomware attacks, customers received one invoice in September that was designed to cover expenses for anywhere from two to three months of usage.

The town released a fact sheet to try to be more proactive in explaining the problem, but the messaging came too late, reached too few people, and became overshadowed by news reports and social media posts from the mayor. Employees repeatedly found themselves unable to get ahead of a problem that they felt Gilbert exacerbated through his 12,000-person Facebook following.

The mayor repeatedly called it a “crisis” and at times amplified issues on social media without first speaking to staff or vetting the accuracy of residents’ concerns.

This only increased what was already a high call volume following the cyberattack.

A staff of around six people was left with the fallout and became inundated with angry calls from residents who saw Gilbert’s posts and suspected there was an issue with their bill as well.

Some people had legitimate issues with their utility bills, including residents who moved during the summer, saw their meters break, had solar panel credits, or

didn’t have their bills transferred to a new account holder.

For many others, however, it was simply the combination of rate hikes in a new town budget, increased summer usage, and bundling of multiple months into one bill that caused surprise.

One employee says it’d be accurate to compare the mayor’s handling of the issue to the folk tale of Chicken Little exclaiming that the sky is falling.

The town started to turn the corner on billing issues earlier this year, but several employees continue to feel repeatedly undercut more than a year later, as Gilbert continues to provide updates on his Facebook page labeling utility billing issues as a “crisis.”

“I know people don’t like that word, but for seniors, single moms who can’t afford these bills, it’s a crisis to them,” Gilbert says. “I’ve had people in my office crying.

Adults. You can check all my messages, and in all my messages, I’ve always said staff is working hard. This isn’t against staff.”

Audra Killingsworth, the other outgoing council member, sees things differently.

“I’m frustrated with all the levels of misinformation that are coming out,” Killingsworth says.

She points to a September 24 post where Gilbert, in the comments section,

Gilbert isn’t up for reelection himself this fall.

Indeed, some council members retiring this year may feel more emboldened to speak up as a result of their imminent departures. While many council members are concerned about what Evans’s ascension could mean for the town—particularly contentious appointment, zoning, and development votes—they say they’re far more concerned about social media posts the mayor has made about utility billing, abrupt news conferences over zoning disputes, and other issues that have negatively impacted staff.

Four of the town’s five council members spoke to the INDY on the record; Ed Gray, the mayor pro tem seeking reelection this year, was the only member who didn’t respond to a request for comment. Gantt and Killingsworth are retiring at the end of their terms this year, in part, they say, due to frustrations with the mayor and a sense they’ve done as much as they can for the town.

Mahaffey and Zegerman, whose terms expire in 2027, say they felt a need to come forward with their concerns over what they see as increasingly destructive behavior from the mayor.

“Morale with staff right now is terrible,” Zegerman says. “Staff has clearly expressed to the members of council frustration with the persistent meddling of the mayor in operational affairs. It has led to attrition.”

Meanwhile, a former Apex official says they wished council members would’ve summoned the courage to speak out sooner.

“For too long, the council members have not stood up and taken actions that were necessary for them to take to stand up against the mayor,” the former official says.

“The council holds the power. It shouldn’t take two of them announcing that they’re not running for reelection before they start standing up and doing the right thing.” W Bryan Anderson is a freelance reporter who most recently covered elections, voting access, and state government for WRAL-TV. He previously reported for the Associated Press and The News & Observer.

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

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NEWS

Wake County Raleigh’s Devereux Meadow ballpark in 1947 COURTESY OF THE STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA

a team. Raleigh is now on nearly every pundit’s short list.

But if the MLB team owners, who will determine the location of the new franchises, want to see proof of concept, Raleigh has a challenge. Because of unfortunate timing, changing economics, personal preferences, and the game’s own rules, there has been no professional baseball, on any level, in Raleigh for 54 years. It’s the largest U.S. city without pro ball within 20 miles of its center.

When the stats are aggregated, when the ledger sheets are opened, when the politicians are heard, the hardest question to answer might be the intangible: Is Raleigh truly a Major League Baseball town?

When Yaz Roamed Raleigh

Raleigh Tries to Break Its 54-Year Baseball Losing Streak The city appears to be a good candidate for a Major League Baseball franchise. But even a minor league team has eluded it for more than a half-century.

BY ERIC FREDERICK backtalk@indyweek.com

W

hen Raleigh is mentioned as a serious contender for a Major League Baseball expansion franchise, the reaction is often a mix of disdain and disbelief.

“People say, ‘Really? Raleigh?’” said Wayne McDonnell of Concord, who taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an associate professor of the practice in sports industry management at Georgetown University.

“Funny thing is, when you start laying everything out, they go, ‘It makes total sense.’”

MLB last expanded 27 years ago but is nearly certain to select two new teams by 2029, when Commissioner Rob Manfred retires. For seven years, a growing coalition of advocates has built a case for Raleigh.

The pioneer is the MLB Raleigh campaign, conceived at a downtown bar in 2018 when two friends, Lou Pascucci and Ryan Foose, were watching a game and saw a clip about expansion contenders.

14 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

“He and I were like, ‘Why is Raleigh never listed?’” Pascucci told The Assembly. They dug into the demographic and economic data that could determine success—including population within an hour’s drive, media market size, and median income—“and Raleigh looked amazing in all of them,” Pascucci said.

Pascucci, Foose, and another fan, Will Gadd, founded MLB Raleigh to amplify the conversation. The campaign has been using meetups, media appearances, and a website full of data to raise awareness. They’ve also sold merchandise, including a ball cap with the Raleigh area code “919” embedded in a home plate logo, to support local youth baseball.

Mayor Janet Cowell, Gov. Josh Stein, and former Gov. Roy Cooper have expressed support. Most importantly, Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, whose net worth is estimated at $1.5 billion, says he’s committed to landing

Raleigh does have a rich, though distant, history with pro baseball.

No trace remains of its first home for minor league ball, League Park, built in 1912 on the south side of New Bern Avenue in East Raleigh, at the end of a streetcar line. The spot where future Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg stretched for throws in the dog days of 1930 is now the backyard of a house on Tarboro Road.

But the stadium had a good run. Raleigh had a minor league team for five seasons starting in 1913, and for 12 years after World War I, nicknamed the Red Birds, Nats, and then the name that stuck: Capitals. League Park got lights in 1931–four years before the major leagues held their first night game at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.

Lifelong Raleigh resident Marshall Wyatt, 75, remembers a League Park story told by his father, Edgar: “They’d get a nickel together, and they’d get on the streetcar.

When the driver got there he’d take a break, and the streetcar would just sit there for 20 or 30 minutes. My dad and his buddies would crawl out and climb onto the roof of the streetcar, and they could see over the fence into the ballpark.”

The Depression was the first test of Raleigh’s connection to the game, after the Capitals folded in 1932. “A lot of minor league teams shut down,” said baseball historian J. Chris Holaday, who teaches writing at Duke University. “Durham shut down for two years. Raleigh shut down for 14.”

With an eye on better days, and using funds from the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, in 1938, the city built a larger stadium, Devereux Meadow, atop an old playground. Wedged between Peace, West, and Dawson

streets just north of downtown, it had the quirky dimensions of many street-squeezed urban ballparks of the era.

When the Carolina League restarted after World War II, the Capitals were reborn and joined high school and American Legion teams as tenants at Devereux. The next 15 years were the golden age of pro baseball in Raleigh.

Wyatt spent many days and nights at Devereux as a boy, as did Dwight Nipper, 77, another lifelong Raleigh resident.

Nipper recalls being there when a game was paused in the third inning so Carl Yastrzemski, perhaps the greatest Capital ever, could receive the league’s Player of the Year award for 1959.

But moments like those and the park’s lyrical name were about all that was elegant about Devereux Meadow. Bleachers down the right-field line flanked a wooden grandstand with a tin roof. The expanse behind home plate, to every pitcher’s delight, was spacious, a final resting place for many foul balls. Pop-ups beyond the catcher’s reach would clang on the roof. “The frame and the restrooms, the dugouts, the whole park was painted dark green,” Nipper said.

A batter might glimpse Raleigh’s modest skyline to the south over the wooden center-field fence, plus the Cotton Mill and a huge Philco-Bendix sign on a low hill. He also would see that fence’s distance marker, a forbidding 420 feet.

To the left was something more inviting—a two-story left-field wall with double rows of ads for such midcentury Southern icons as RC Cola and Jesse Jones sausage. Like the Green Monster that Yaz would later patrol at Boston’s Fenway Park, the wall was tall but tantalizing, just 315 to 325 feet away (accounts vary) at the foul pole. Behind it was Dawson Street, later named Downtown Boulevard

and now Capital Boulevard, where homers often fell.

Raleigh won league titles in 1946 and 1947, and the large crowds in that era might have seen umpire Lou Bello giving hecklers as good as he got, or Durham Bulls player-manager Willie Duke appraising an ump’s visual acuity by dumping dirt over home plate.

Caps-Bulls “was a super rivalry, like State-Carolina,” Nipper said. “I remember how the fans got into it. We didn’t fight, but, I mean, we got into it.”

But Wyatt and Nipper were watching the autumn of pro ball in Raleigh.

“The heyday was the early ’50s,” Holaday said. “The team invested heavily in a lot of veteran players, including Crash Davis,” a former major leaguer from Gastonia who loosely inspired Kevin Costner’s movie character in the 1988 baseball classic “Bull Durham.” Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams played in exhibition games at Devereux that decade.

The Caps finished first in the 1948, 1952, 1953, and 1959 regular seasons but lost each time in the playoffs.

All the while, televised big league games kept more fans at home. Attendance fell from more than 2,000 per game in 1946 to less than 500—barely one in 10 seats filled— in the early ’60s. Years later, the Meadow was “often as quiet as a sanctuary,” News & Observer sportswriter A.J. Carr wrote in 1971.

The franchise held on through the ’60s as the Caps became the Mets, Senators, Cardinals, and Pirates before merging with the rival Bulls for four seasons beginning in 1968. They split home games between Devereux and Durham Athletic Park, bowing out as the last-place Raleigh-Durham Triangles.

Under gathering storm clouds from Hurricane Beth on a Sunday afternoon, August 15, 1971, just 205 souls

watched the last minor league game in Raleigh, a 2-0 win over Lynchburg.

Devereux, which for a while continued to host Legion and high school baseball and football games, slowly crumbled. Saplings poked through the bleachers, and kudzu hid the restrooms. Rocks and glass were hazards on the field.

A homeless man fell asleep in the scorer’s booth on a frigid night in February 1978 and never woke up. In 1979, the city demolished what was left and put up a parking lot for garbage trucks.

The 35-Mile Rule No one knew it, but as Devereux fell, the window was closing for pro baseball in Raleigh for more than 40 years.

In 1980, Miles Wolff, who grew up in Greensboro and worked in minor league jobs around the South during the ’70s, scouted several cities looking for a team to buy. Those were “not great times for minor league baseball,” said Allan Simpson of Durham, who founded the publication Baseball America. “You could get a franchise by just assuming the debts of the previous owner.”

Wolff got his for $2,417, choosing to resurrect the Bulls in Durham, where the ballpark still stood. “It was pretty run down,” Simpson said, “but it was there”—while Raleigh had no place to play. The Bulls under Wolff quickly became a leader in the renaissance of minor league baseball nationwide.

Raleigh’s best shot came in the late 1980s. Tom McCormick, who was city attorney for 40 years, and his friend and fellow lawyer Clyde Holt III started a group called Friends of Raleigh Baseball and began going to baseball’s national winter meetings to scout the possibilities.

McCormick helped secure a referendum on $3.5 million in bonds to build a stadium, and voters approved it in October 1987. Days before the vote, Kinston Indians owner Stuart Revo expressed interest in moving his Carolina League team to Raleigh, and in compensating Wolff for attendance losses. “We had discussions,” Wolff, 81, told The Assembly. “I didn’t like it, but it was going to be tough to fight, to keep baseball out of Raleigh.”

But Raleigh’s City Council rejected Revo, favoring a plan by advertising executive Steve Bryant and former major leaguer Barry Foote to bring a higher-level, Class AA team. It was a consequential decision.

At that time, baseball’s rules wouldn’t allow a new team in a city whose corporate limits were within 10 miles of an existing team’s city.

“I took a close look at the rule, and it talks about building a stadium within the city limits,” McCormick said. “So it occurred to me that, maybe if we built it outside the city limits … ” The minor leagues’ general counsel agreed with his interpretation. A site beside North Carolina State University’s Carter-Finley Stadium was then outside the city, and it was available.

But Wake County was crucial to the Bulls.

About a third of their fan base was there, “and we were Class A,” Wolff said. “I thought we’d get buried.” So in 1988, Wolff persuaded his fellow team owners to change the rule by prohibiting a

“I actually think the lack of baseball has created a pent-up demand.”

Above: Lou Pascucci talks to Dwight Nipper near the former site of Raleigh’s minor league baseball stadium Right: Dwight Nipper recalls attending games at Raleigh’s Devereux Meadow stadium, which was demolished in 1979 PHOTOS BY TYLER NORTHRUP

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

15

Above: Ads line the outfield fence of Devereux Meadow in the 1950s. The ballpark was never elegant and eventually fell into disrepair; Left: The 1913 Raleigh Capitals minor league baseball team. The team folded in 1932 COURTESY OF THE STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA

new team whose home plate would be within 35 miles of another team’s home plate. Wolff also wouldn’t grant the Raleigh group a waiver.

Bryant and Foote had bought a team in Columbus, Georgia, and in 1991 they renamed it the Carolina Mudcats and moved it to Zebulon, just outside the 35-mile limit—and 21 miles east of downtown Raleigh. The Bulls, meanwhile, helped lead the rebirth of downtown Durham after Wolff agreed to sell them in May 1990 to Jim Goodmon Sr., president of Capitol Broadcasting Company. The city of Durham, fearing the Bulls might move, found the money to build a new downtown stadium, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, which opened in 1995, and in 1998 the franchise moved up to Class AAA, the highest level of minor league ball.

There were other proposals in Raleigh, including one in 1991 to build a baseball stadium as part of a huge sports and entertainment complex around Carter-Finley. None ever came to fruition, and the territorial rule remained a hurdle.

“Raleigh has paid the price for something that was established in 1988, and was probably outdated by 1998,” said Ron Morris, former sports journalist and author of No Bull: The Real Story of the Durham Bulls and the Rebirth of a Team and a City.

Finally, 10 years ago, Dan Thomson, a commercial real estate broker based in Raleigh, began pushing a plan that would have skirted the territorial rule. The idea was to field a team in the independent Atlantic League, an official MLB Partner League not bound by the rule, with a talent level comparable to the high minor leagues. The league has teams from New York to North Carolina, including the High Point Rockers and the Gastonia Ghost Peppers.

Thomson, now 51, pitched the idea to developers, council members, city officials, potential investors, and Atlantic League leaders.

He got a civil engineer to look at the Devereux site and found that it wouldn’t work. “So I go on this massive escapade of searching for land,” he told The Assembly, and 16 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

John Kane, who was redeveloping the North Hills area, mentioned a possible site there.

“Then, all of a sudden, my phone rings, and it’s an architect from Populous,” a global firm that designed the new Yankee Stadium and the Mets’ Citi Field, “and they were gracious enough to do some stadium renderings.”

Thomson then looked into a crucial piece: funding. He checked municipal bond rates and looked at the RaleighWake interlocal fund, which takes applications for money from a hospitality tax to fund capital projects involving culture, sports, and tourism.

There were a lot of projects in line ahead of him, and then COVID hit. He shelved the idea.

Edge Over Charlotte Advocates for a Raleigh MLB team know about its losing streak, but “I actually think the lack of baseball has created a pent-up demand,” Pascucci said. They also argue that Raleigh in 2025 would be unrecognizable to a time traveler from 1971, and that the team would be a regional and even statewide draw. North Carolina is the largest state without an MLB team.

Pascucci noted that the population within an hour’s drive of Raleigh is larger than that of all other expansion contenders, and even five current MLB markets: Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Kansas City.

Manfred has said that, ideally, one new team would be in the East and one in the West. ESPN last year named Charlotte, Montreal, Nashville, Orlando, and Raleigh as the eastern contenders, but The Athletic in August narrowed the list to Nashville, Orlando, and Raleigh, saying Raleigh had more momentum and political support than Charlotte. A senior MLB writer for The Athletic, Stephen Nesbitt, has since trimmed it to Raleigh and Nashville.

In August, Michael Walden, an economic consultant and professor emeritus at NC State, independently did a feasibility and impact study of the contenders that further

fortified Raleigh’s case. His data give Raleigh a slight edge over Charlotte, he told The Assembly.

Walden said Raleigh’s standout assets include anticipated growth, distance from an existing franchise, a prospective owner, and only a small overlap with the schedules of other popular area sports. Charlotte residents came out a little ahead in average weekly earnings, adjusted for cost of living ($1,060 to $1,015, with Nashville at $987) and media market size (Charlotte is 21st in the country, Raleigh 22nd, and Nashville 26th).

Another Raleigh asset is the number of transplants who have brought their team loyalties and love of the game to North Carolina. Of the 12 most common states of origin for recent transplants, nine—California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas—have a total of 18 MLB teams. The same phenomenon helped to sustain the Hurricanes in their early years.

As for the Durham Bulls, Goodmon has said that by agreement with MLB, the Bulls cannot block a major league team in Raleigh. Pascucci notes that other Triple-A teams have thrived in MLB markets, including Atlanta, Boston, Houston, and Minnesota.

Walden did mention one potential drawback. “I’d call it an image issue,” he said. “When you think of Nashville, everyone knows Nashville: ‘Oh, Music City.’ Raleigh is actually bigger than Nashville and is projected to grow faster. …

When they think of Raleigh: ‘What do you mean, Raleigh?

What’s there?’ I think we need some sort of a tag. Maybe ‘Tech City.’”

Raleigh’s biggest asset, analysts say, is having a principal owner lined up.

When Dundon, with other investors, reached a tentative agreement this summer to buy the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, many Raleigh enthusiasts thought he had taken his eye off the ball. But sports talk and podcast veteran Joe Ovies says the contrary is probably true: “He’s trying to tell Major League Baseball, ‘I can put together a legitimate ownership group. I can do this.’” W

BRITTANY RICHARDS DISTRICT A

THE INDY’S 2025 ENDORSEMENTS:

CARY MUNICIPAL ELECTION Our recommendations for Cary Town Council’s District A and C and at-large seats.

By INDY staff

Cary’s town council has seen a shakeup in recent years, with newcomers to town government arriving and longtime council members leaving the board in the last three election cycles.

This fall’s municipal election promises more of the same; at least one new face will join the council in District C as Jack Smith vacates his seat after 36 years of service, and two incumbents are in tough fights to defend their seats in District A and at large.

While no town council member’s name was on the ballot in last fall’s general election, Cary voters still found a way to make a statement. They voted to reject two bond proposals—a $560 million package for park projects and a $30 million affordable housing initiative—by 10- and three-point margins, respectively.

Combined, the bonds would have increased the town’s tax rate by 9¢, staggered in 3¢ increments on a biennial basis, if voters had given their approval. As things stand, town leaders and residents still name affordable housing and parks and green spaces as priorities, but leaders on the council will have the continued challenge of figuring out how to pay for these priorities.

Will they raise the town’s tax rate—still one of the lowest in the county at 34¢ per $100 valuation—again, or will they make decisions to cut services or find ways to deliver on ongoing projects more affordably?

While the town council races are officially nonpartisan, it’s notable that all of the races divide neatly along party lines. Overall, Cary leans slightly more blue, with more than half of the town’s 119,000 registered voters being unaffiliated. A growing, increasingly politically engaged Asian American population is looking to make inroads this election as well.

For our Cary Town Council endorsements, we considered candidates’ prior experience and understanding of the council’s role and capabilities. We looked at who is best positioned to serve the town’s diverse constituency and who seems prepared to make difficult decisions with forethought and care.

We reached out to all six candidates for interviews, talked to others knowledgeable about local government, reviewed voting records, attended candidate forums, and relied on our own reporting to come to a consensus about whom to recommend.

Here are our endorsements for the Cary Town Council District A, District C, and at-large seats.

Three Cary municipal races are on the ballot this fall: District A, District C, and one at-large seat (you can look up your district on the Town of Cary’s website). Voters who live in Districts A and C can select one candidate for their respective districts, and all registered Cary voters can cast a vote in the at-large race. The candidate with the most votes in each race wins.

The 2025 municipal election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

The absentee-by-mail voting period began Friday, oct. 3, for the municipal election.

Early voting will be held thursday, oct. 16–saturday, Nov. 1 Check the Orange and Wake county elections boards' website for early voting locations and hours. Voters can register to vote at any early voting site with valid photo ID and proof of current address on a utility bill, bank statement, or paycheck.

In the four years she’s lived in Cary, BRITTANY RICHARDS has immersed herself in civic life as a member of the environmental advisory board, a precinct officer, and a volunteer and advocate for environmental causes. A professional who’s worked with nonprofits and universities, Richards also holds a master’s degree in public policy and diligently attends town council meetings, notebook in hand.

On the issues, Richards doesn’t differ much from her opponent, Jennifer Robinson. She supports preserving green spaces and Cary’s tree canopy, maintaining the high quality of the town’s services, and expanding housing types and affordable options. Richards wants to continue adding density where it makes sense and would spearhead changes to Cary’s zoning ordinances to encourage more missing middle housing.

A strategic adviser at SAS, Robinson has been a steady leader during her 26 years on the council, and her service on town committees and relationships with officials countywide are valuable. She has good ideas around encouraging more housing, including leaning into partnerships with housing nonprofits.

But District A has grown in the last decade and now skews younger and more progressive; we think it would benefit from a fresh perspective. We were also disappointed to see emails Robinson wrote from her town account in 2023 disparaging members of the LGBTQ community in relation to a Christmas parade float. In a time when vulnerable communities—immigrants, transgender people—are under attack at the federal level, we think all Cary residents deserve to know they have the support of their local elected officials.

The INDY endorses Brittany Richards.

Polling places will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

17

BELLA HUANG

CARISSA KOHN-JOHNSON

In District C, which leans older and more conservative compared to Cary at large, two relative newcomers are vying to replace Jack Smith.

Although neither candidate has held office before, each has a history of political engagement that tells us a bit about how they’d approach the job.

BELLA HUANG is a co-founder of the Margin of Victory Empowerment (MOVE) Foundation and political action committee, which work to increase Asian American representation in government. She also co-founded the North Carolina Asian Americans Alliance, which puts on cultural events and festivals. As a Chinese American immigrant herself, Huang says she wants to serve and represent Cary’s large and growing Asian population. She has a master’s in business administration and runs an online small business selling laptop covers.

Huang’s platform centers on sustainability, improving infrastructure, expanding town services for youth and seniors, and addressing the rising cost of living in Cary. She wants to see the town partner with nonprofits to build housing that’s truly affordable and supports reintroducing an affordable housing bond.

Huang’s opponent, Renee Miller, ran for this seat in 2022 and lost to Smith by a slim margin. She’s a current member of Cary’s greenway committee and was president of the Western Wake Republican Club for six years. Miller is campaigning as a fiscal conservative who would keep Cary’s tax rate low, but she also wants to invest in the town’s police and fire departments, roads, and senior services—and doesn’t have a clear answer for how she’d square those conflicting priorities. When it comes to housing, Miller’s skepticism of density and mixed-income development feels out-ofstep with Cary’s current shortage of affordable options.

The INDY endorses Bella Huang.

In her four years on council, CARISSA KOHN-JOHNSON has focused on all the right priorities. With a background in gerontology, KohnJohnson is particularly aware of how a lopsided housing market can disadvantage retirees and empty nesters looking to downsize—that’s an excellent perspective to have when governing on behalf of Wake County’s oldest municipal population.

What really impresses us about KohnJohnson, though, is her honesty. North Carolina town governments don’t have all that much power, and the most effective local officials are often those who are cleareyed about their options and honest with residents about financial pressures. This year, the council unanimously voted to raise taxes, and Kohn-Johnson is already openly warning residents that another, albeit more moderate, increase is coming unless the town decides to cut services. KohnJohnson has also proven more than willing to engage—we’ve seen her clarifying her stances for voters at town events and even on Reddit.

Her challenger, Marjorie Eastman, has an admirable record of public service as a U.S. Army combat veteran. In her unsuccessful 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate, Eastman held her own on the Republican primary debate stage, but we’re not sure that her defense expertise and focus on national politics lend themselves to town governance. Eastman has some local government experience serving on Cary’s economic development committee, but we’re not seeing her offer a clear plan to bring down what she has criticized as the council's “reckless spending” while also fulfilling her promise to hire more police officers and firefighters.

The INDY endorses Carissa Kohn-Johnson for another term.

DISTRICT C

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indyweek.com/elections 18 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

AT LARGE

THE INDY’S 2025 ENDORSEMENTS:

CHAPEL HILL, CARRBORO, CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO CITY SCHOOLS Our recommendations for Chapel Hill mayor and council, Carrboro mayor and council, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board

By INDY staff

Local government in Chapel Hill and Carrboro in recent months has been dominated by two seemingly existential challenges: climate change and the economy.

The already climate-conscious towns were confronted with a harsh reality on July 6, that even with sustainability managers, green facilities, and emission reduction plans, both were still highly vulnerable to the record rainfall dropped by Tropical Storm Chantal.

Chapel Hill’s Eastgate shopping center was inundated. Floodwaters inched toward the mound of coal ash still sitting on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Carrboro’s Public Works facility was destroyed along with police cars, garbage trucks, and other town vehicles.

At the same time, town council and school board members alike were faced with a tougher-than-usual budget season, trying to balance precarious federal funding (and in the case of schools, dwindling state funding), rising costs of doing business, and pressure to limit tax hikes following a property revaluation that was brutal for some.

Heading into elections these issues continue to dominate, demanding

officials who can meet the moment with relevant experience in things like affordable housing, planning, and climate resilience. In reviewing candidates for these endorsements—talking with candidates and others knowledgeable about local politics, attending forums, and reporting on Orange County—we looked for these qualities, along with community support, proactive energy, and specific ideas for addressing local issues.

That said, Orange County voters don’t have many tough choices to make when they head to the polls. The race for Chapel Hill Town Council, with five candidates vying for four seats (including open seats being vacated by Adam Searing and Karen Stegman), is the only truly competitive race on the ballot. Three school board candidates are guaranteed seats; the same goes for the three candidates running for Carrboro Town Council. Chapel Hill’s mayor is unopposed in her reelection bid, and in deep-blue Orange County, Carrboro’s mayor might as well be too.

Among a slew of candidates with relevant (and in some cases pretty similar) experience, here are our picks for Orange County’s municipal elections.

Six municipal races are on the ballot in Orange County for Chapel Hill mayor and town council, Carrboro mayor and town council, and Hillsborough mayor and board, as well as the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) board. Voters in Chapel Hill can make one pick for mayor and four for council. In Carrboro, voters can make one pick for mayor and three for council. Residents who live within the CHCCS district can also vote for three candidates for school board. Hillsborough voters can make one pick for mayor and two for town board. Find sample ballots on the Orange County Board of Elections website.

C HA P E L HI LL

JESS ANDERSON CHAPEL HILL MAYOR

Incumbent mayor JESS ANDERSON won her first term two years ago on a progrowth platform that touted the town’s Complete Communities Strategy as a guide for the ongoing population influx, and she is running unopposed on largely the same platform this year. We have found Anderson to be open and accessible, and we especially appreciate her policy chops and her clear vision for the council.

The mayor is just one vote on a council of nine but has the daunting task of trying to moderate the debates between the voices and factions on that rather large council (Durham and Cary have councils of seven; Raleigh has eight). Anderson still has work to do on that front; many residents were disappointed to see Chris Blue leave the town manager role after only two years, and the lack of a permanent manager threw this year’s budget process into a disarray that left Anderson voting against a majority of her council.

That said, the town’s new manager seems to be a strong consensus pick who has promised to make next year’s budget process smoother, and we hope that the appointment bodes well for Anderson’s continued work at building collaboration across her council.

We endorse Jess Anderson for a second term.

CAMILLE BERRY, PARIS MILLER-FOUSHEE, LOUIE RIVERS, WES MCMAHON CHAPEL HILL TOWN COUNCIL (4 SEATS)

All the candidates vying for seats on the Chapel Hill Town Council generally agree on the issues—though they may differ in approach or effectiveness—and they all bring relevant experience.

Incumbent CAMILLE BERRY has both worked in the affordable housing space and experienced housing insecurity herself. She has served Chapel Hill and the Triangle more broadly for more than 20 years, with extensive experience in financial operations and strategic planning that help make her a well-rounded council member. In addition to her experience, we appreciate Berry’s genuine attention to community engagement through her seemingly infinite hours spent meeting community members for coffee chats. She understands the needs of lowand moderate-income residents and brings specific ideas to the table. We endorse her for a second term.

Incumbent PARIS MILLER-FOUSHEE also touts firsthand experience with issues relevant to the council’s work—housing affordability, public safety, and economic development. The assistant director for the Center for Muslim Life at Duke University, MillerFoushee has local politics and government experience, including with Chapel Hill’s Police Advisory Committee and the Re-Imagining Community Safety Task Force.

On and off council, Miller-Foushee has been an advocate for enabling affordable housing, supporting unhoused people, providing alternative responses for mental health crises, and enhancing early warnings in flood-prone neighborhoods. This campaign cycle, Miller-Foushee pledged to “mar-

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

19

shal the political will to end homelessness” in Chapel Hill. That’s an ambitious goal that will require coalition building—and we hope that Miller-Foushee is able to clear that strikingly high bar that she’s set for herself.

We endorse her for a second term.

Among the challengers, we were particularly impressed by LOUIE RIVERS III and WES MCMAHON and endorse them both.

Rivers is a social scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency and a former professor who holds degrees in natural resource management. He would bring valuable expertise in environmental policy to the council as Chapel Hill continues to deal with the dual challenges of growth and climate change. Rivers has demonstrated as much during his time on the town’s Planning Commission, where he has been an advocate for both increased housing supply and environmental protections.

Especially in the wake of Chantal and as the town continues working to rewrite its land use policies, his experience seems exactly right for a council that puts climate resilience among its top priorities. What’s more, Rivers has considerable community support, including from folks who don’t always agree on Chapel Hill politics, which points to his genuine character and ability to be an effective council member.

McMahon, a former refugee resettlement professional and current ESL instructor with a decade of experience on town commissions, is running with a focus on community engagement. We were healthily skeptical of McMahon’s claims about being a “connector” and a “communicator.” But everything we’ve seen from him indicates an earnestness and optimism that, matched with his experience, would make him an excellent choice for town council in a rather difficult time for Chapel Hill. McMahon has emphasized that the town needs to do more work to tell residents how they can actually have effective input, rather than giving them unrealistic expectations for changes that the town can’t actually make.

20 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

Let’s be clear— there is no reason not to vote for Erik Valera. We appreciate his nonprofit experience, his community leadership, and his focus on the social determinants of health. We endorsed Valera two years ago, and we still believe he would make an excellent council member. But, like voters next month, we have a difficult decision about whom to leave off our list. To us, the experience of the incumbents, and the climate and community focuses, respectively, of the other two challengers, help push them to our top four spots.

CAR R BOR O

BARBARA FOUSHEE CARRBORO MAYOR

Carrboro mayor BARBARA FOUSHEE is running all but unopposed for her second term as mayor. In her first term, Foushee led the council to make a major statement of Carrboro’s values in filing a lawsuit against Duke Energy for climate damages.

Foushee has made storm recovery a cornerstone of her campaign, given that Carrboro has residents who are still dealing with the aftermath of Chantal and the town’s own public works fleet was wiped out. Foushee also clearly enjoys the parts of the job that take her outside of city hall and embodies the role of ever-present small-town mayor at civic events. She is approachable, knowledgeable, and capable.

Her opponent, Joe H. Lloyd Jr., has not participated in forums or questionnaires.

We endorse Barbara Foushee for a second term.

DANNY NOWELL, CRISTÓBAL PALMER

CARRBORO TOWN COUNCIL (3 SEATS) The council, which has three candidates running for three seats, has continued to invest in sustainability and push for a modernized Unified Development Ordinance. DANNY NOWELL , a democratic

socialist who takes every opportunity to talk about either the power of labor or the tactics of basketball, is seeking a second term on the council. CRISTÓBAL PALMER , who won the special election for a vacancy last year on a platform of transit and equity advocacy, is seeking a full first term.

Fred Joiner, a former Carrboro poet laureate, is bringing commendable focus on the arts and passion for the time to his bid for a first term, but we have too little information about his platform to issue an endorsement.

We endorse Nowell and Palmer for council.

C HA P E L HI LL- CA RR BO RO C I T Y SC HOOLS

GEORGE GRIFFIN, RIZA JENKINS, MELINDA MANNING CHCCS SCHOOL BOARD (3 SEATS)

There is no shortage of educated and civic-minded residents in the Chapel HillCarrboro City Schools (CHCCS) district, so it’s something of a mystery why only three of them are running for the three seats in this year’s school board election. Perhaps those legions have realized that it’s easier to criticize from behind an anonymous Reddit username than it is to lead from a public dais.

The CHCCS board has faced its fair share of challenges in recent years—and the job is not getting any easier as the board looks at carrying out the construction paid for by the recent bond, consolidating elementary schools as enrollment declines, and figuring out how to maintain the same levels of excellence in a time when everything costs more and state funding declines along with student enrollment.

The board’s most daunting challenge will be in how to communicate solutions to the

public, and how to maintain trust when those solutions cause some pain.

GEORGE GRIFFIN and RIZA JENKINS have proven themselves as effective leaders and communicators in their terms on the board. Griffin's service in education goes back to the 1970s, and it shows in his knowledge of policy and adeptness in running board meetings. In addition to four years on the CHCCS board, Griffin also served as an administrator in Durham and Wake counties and at the state level.

Jenkins, in addition to her four years on the board, brings valuable experience as a single mother of three CHCCS students who has long volunteered in local schools and the community.

Newcomer MELINDA MANNING has run on a platform of increasing transparency, promising to make more information accessible to parents and community members. Manning has a varied background of education experience, advocacy work, and civic involvement, having served as a teacher, assistant dean of students at UNCChapel Hill, a member of the Carrboro Board of Adjustment, and former board president for the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

We are pleased to endorse George Griffin, Riza Jenkins, and Melinda Manning for school board.

INDY editor-in-chief Sarah Willets, Wake County editor Jane Porter, and staff writers Chloe Courtney Bohl and Chase Pellegrini de Paur contributed to these endorsements.

ETC.

ONLY PHANTOMS: SIP WITH

Unwined, Wake Forest | facebook.com/people/Onlyphantoms-Paranormal | October 16, 2025

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

Getting Ghosted My 1900s Oakwood home has all the hallmarks of a haunted house. To learn more, I called in the experts: A paranormal investigative group called Onlyphantoms.

BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com

E

ach year in early October, my kids and I attach heavy-duty punch balloons to the ceiling of our front porch with rubber bands and strings. We cover the balloons with white bedsheets, eyes and ghostly mouths drawn on in black permanent marker—a little homemade seasonal flair to liven up the streetscape during spooky season.

But for a while, I’ve also wondered if there are ghosts living inside my house, too. Unlike the ones bobbing around on my porch, I can’t actually see them, but they’ve had ways of making their presence known through mysterious whispers and footsteps, unexplained shadows, cold spells, and unaccountable smells.

So I did what any self-respecting journalist in pursuit of truth would do: I turned to the experts—in this case, a local group, cheekily called Onlyphantoms, that offers free paranormal investigations in the Triangle area—to debunk my suspicion that my house is haunted.

Because ghosts are make-believe, right? As someone who deals in facts, I feel like I’m required to think so.

First, some background: I live in a restored two-story Queen Anne frame home near downtown Raleigh, just on the edge of historic Oakwood. It’s all creaky wooden floors, drafty chimneys, and squeaky doors, but it stands on a new foundation. According to documentation from the Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood, the house was originally built on a lot located a few blocks away on South Wilmington Street, for one Lizzie O. Watson, in 1906.

But Lizzie Watson wasn’t the first person to live in the home, although a 1914 directory from the Edenton Street Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Raleigh indicates she lived there later (she died in 1927, according to historical records). The home’s first occupant was H. Harold Hume, North Carolina’s state horticulturalist and a professor at NC State University. According to a letter from

a neighbor who discovered and gifted us a framed photograph of the house in its original location, the home once belonged to my neighbor’s cousin-in-law, Virginia Watson.

The state of North Carolina acquired it from Watson by eminent domain in the 1960s or ’70s, when it was planning to build a North-South Expressway through Oakwood.

The expressway was never built, and the home housed state offices for several decades. In 2008, it was picked up and moved to its current location for a planned development project. That project never happened, either, and so we bought the home, officially named the Watson House, from the state in 2018. We moved in in 2022, after a long restoration process.

Soon after, I began noticing that things were amiss—literally amiss, as in cups and glasses, dresses, cutlery, candles, books disappear occasionally, and what is that smoky smell, that sudden rush of cold air on my arm? Why do I often get the feeling that I’m stepping into a room after someone else has just left it?

This fall seemed like the perfect time to search for some answers. When I heard about Onlyphantoms, I knew I’d found my opportunity.

O

nlyphantoms is a team of more than a dozen people who get together regularly to conduct paranormal research across North Carolina. Founder Jason Smith had his first encounter with the paranormal as a six-year-old growing up on his grandparents’ farm in Franklin County, but it wasn’t until the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 that he actively sought out such experiences.

Smith and some friends went camping at the notoriously haunted Devil’s Tramping Ground in Chatham County, outfitted with a pair of dowsing rods and an electromagnetic field (EMF) detector.

“We had a couple of things happen that night, nothing necessarily paranormal,” Smith says. “But it was interesting, to say the least.”

The camping trip evolved into a hobby that led to an organized group that now conducts regular investigations October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

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From left, Jennifer Pearce, Travis Pearce, Jason Smith, and Sterling Hunt of the Onlyphantoms team PHOTO BY JANE PORTER

at residences and public buildings. In addition to Devil’s Tramping Ground, the group has investigated the battleship North Carolina in Wilmington, Stonewall Manor in Rocky Mount, and the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia. They’ve found evidence of the paranormal in all these places, to varying degrees, they say, whether it’s a dissipating shadow or a strange, unexplainable mist.

It was something of a process to get a residential visit from Onlyphantoms on the books. I proposed the idea to Smith, who discussed it with his team. After much emailing, they ultimately agreed, and our first step was to meet on a Zoom call for a preliminary discussion with Jennifer Pearce, a Raleigh-based certified evidential psychic medium.

A kindergarten teacher by day, Pearce operates as the Sugar Skull Psychic on the side, where she works as an animal psychic medium, paranormal investigator, and manifestation coach and specializes in Reiki, energy clearing, and intuitive tarot.

On the call, Smith advised me that I could tell Pearce as much or as little about my situation as I wanted, and she would fill in the rest.

I told her the gist—old house, weird noises, smells and sensations, things disappearing—but also the realities: little kids, big dog, noisy street, roommate that I’m married to.

Like, I’m not blaming ghosts for that time my keys went missing for three days, only to be discovered stuffed down a Christmas stocking at the back of the toy closet. Or the smoky smell that permeated the downstairs for weeks following an unfortunate incident with the gas burner. Or 22 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

the sounds of ghostly music that could be confused with a five-year-old’s truly startling piano-vocal rendition of the Enya track she likes to listen to on repeat.

Most things, I know, can be explained. But I was surprised by how much Pearce knew that I didn’t tell her.

She was picking up on a lot of residual energy, she told me, a lot of comings and goings. Was it a boarding house in the past, she asked? Close. Also, she had visions of a welldressed man, an educator maybe, she said, and a woman, who inhabited the home peacefully but “didn’t want to scare the little girls.”

Pearce was convinced there are spirits here. Then again, she said, “There are spirits everywhere.”

“Everywhere is haunted,” she told me. But not to worry, because the spirits in my home didn’t mean me or my family any harm. They aren’t malicious; they just had some of their happiest living memories in the home, Pearce said, and most of all, they don’t want to be evicted. Turns out we never truly escape the struggles of the material world.

If I didn’t mind sharing the space with spirits, Pearce said, she could describe ways to set some boundaries. Soon after, we ended the call and all agreed to meet up at my house three weeks later.

I

t’s just after seven p.m. on September 27, and my front doorbell rings. The ghost hunters have arrived.

There are four of them: Onlyphantoms founder Smith; Pearce, the psychic medium; Smith’s friend since high school Sterling Hunt; and Pearce’s husband, Travis.

They come loaded up with equipment, and I ask them

to describe what they’ve brought. They unpack it all on my kitchen table and tell me about each tool.

“Our goal,” Hunt explains, “is not only to try to potentially capture something but also to debunk everything we’ve been told that you experience.”

There’s an Onlyphantoms-branded music box, which plays a chiming version of the Game of Thrones opening score when it senses motion. There’s an EMF reader and little clear plastic balls, cat toys that light up when they detect vibrations. There’s a full-spectrum camera that can pick up infrared and ultraviolet light, spectrums that are undetectable to the human eye, plus an infrared light and an air quality detector. There’s also a night-vision camera and what’s known as a spirit box, “basically a radio, FM radio stations,” Smith explains, that will sweep through the transmissions.

“You’re supposed to ask questions, and … you should get a response,” Smith says. “In theory. Problem is, with that, the response may have nothing to do with what you’re asking.”

“The theory behind it is you can pretty much influence it to give you that particular type of wording, kind of like how Bumblebee talks to Transformers,” Hunt clarifies.

“Yeah, it’s just like that,” Smith enthusiastically affirms.

“I’m good at making analogies,” Hunt jokes. “Part of my training.”

Smith and Hunt explain that there are a couple of pieces of equipment that they didn’t bring. They have an NVR security system with 14 cameras, but it takes a while to set up and disassemble, so they left it at home. And no Ouija boards.

“We do not use them,” Smith says emphatically. “That is not something that we even condone as people, using Ouija boards and not knowing how to actually use them.

The game is OK, but when you’re actually putting intent behind it … that’s something different.”

Once all the equipment is up and running, placed strategically around the dozen or so rooms of the house, the investigation gets underway in earnest.

First, I walk around with Pearce, and she elaborates on what she senses. She says she sensed a lot of nervous energy coming from our dog, an energetic English pointer mix named Tuesday, and that Tuesday seemingly barking at nothing means she’s picking up on things humans can’t hear or see. She’s just making her presence known as a protector, Pearce says.

Pearce says she senses the energy of a young woman wearing a wedding dress and a home that the woman’s family built where she lived with her fiancé. But she doesn’t sense any children, Pearce says, “so I feel like she may have passed young.” Could it be Lizzie Watson?

Pearce tells me the spirits in the house “are welcoming of you and your family.”

“They don’t want to scare you,” she says, “but they do know that, like, sometimes you might hear or see something out of the corner of your eye. They try to keep to themselves, but they also see you as part of their family, because you fixed the place up, and you brought the young girls in, and that energy.”

Pearce says the spirits advise the kids to be careful of the tall windows along the stairway—she senses a past accident there—and notices a smoky smell. I tell her I’ve smelled it before, too, and that there was a fire in the attic of the house some years ago, but I don’t know any more

Equipment for paranormal investigating PHOTO BY JANE PORTER

about it than that.

While Pearce and Hunt continue to look around, I’m asked to turn off all the lights and join Smith and Travis in the living room.

Hunt says he felt a cold sensation brush against him in there, so it seems like a natural place to linger. The equipment is all set up. We sit on the sofas together and wait.

“This is what a lot of investigating is like— sitting in the dark, with someone or alone, asking questions and hoping a device will go off,” Smith says.

We start with the questions.

“Do you like what the family has done in restoring your home?” Smith asks into the darkness. “Did you live here before? Was this a place of business for you?”

The music box starts playing Game of Thrones, but we can’t be sure if it’s in response to a question or if it’s malfunctioning. We try our luck with the spirit box.

“Do you like being here? Do you enjoy the family’s company?” Smith asks. The box sweeps through stations, and we can make out two words: “Texas Rangers,” and then another, “drowning.”

Suddenly, the infrared camera starts beeping. Smith gets up to inspect it.

“Oh, you died,” he says disappointedly, addressing the device.

“Not necessarily awe-inspiring, is it?”

Smith says to me. “Doing paranormal investigating is long hours sitting in the dark, and then long hours reviewing footage, audio—because we may not see anything, but the camera might.”

Just then, the doorbell rings. I head next door to the foyer to see who’s there, but on the front porch, where the bedsheet ghosts will soon sway, there’s not a soul in sight.

footage they gathered from my house, and they’ll let me know what they find, but they haven’t had a chance to do that yet.

I’m not much closer to having answers to my question about whether my house is haunted, but at least I know I’m not completely crazy: weird things do happen here!

Some can be explained, and some can’t—or not just yet, anyway.

I want to know why Smith and his friends do this kind of work, for free, in their spare time.

Everyone has their reasons, Smith says: because they want to encounter something, or want something weird to happen that they can’t explain, “because that will prove to [them] whether or not there is something out there.”

“You know, whether the paranormal exists or not,” he says.

“I just do it for the creep factor, to have fun, to have fun with my friends. But the other side of me wants to be able to explain things. This is something that all paranormal investigators, hopefully truly want—to capture evidence that proves, without the shadow of a doubt, that there is the existence of spirits on the other side.”

Because if there is, he says, then there might be a way to communicate with them.

“There might be a way to prove, through science, that there is something there,” he says. “That there is something more to us being here.” W

A

Onlyphantoms will also host a public investigation at Stonewall Manor in Rocky Mount on October 25.

couple of days after the investigation, I call Smith with some follow-up questions. The crew has promised to review the

Onlyphantoms will be at Unwined in Wake Forest on October 16 for its Sip With event from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.; the public is invited to come out, ask questions, and tell their stories.

­

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

23

WE 10/22 @ CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE & I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE

TH 10/23 @ CAT'S CRADLE

RUSTON KELLY

FR 10/17 @ HAW RIVER BALLROOM

DON WAS AND THE PAN DETROIT ENSEMBLE PERFORM BLUES FOR ALLAH SA 10/25 @ CAT'S CRADLE

JUKEBOX THE GHOST OCTOBER

12/12 FR: EILEN JEWELL + AMANDA ANNE PLATT & THE HONEYCUTTERS

10/28 TU: DON DIXON & ROBERT KIRKLAND: SONGS AND STORIES FROM FRANKLIN STREET IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES

10/17 FR: WINYAH W/ TOBACCO ROAD

10/20 MO: GARY NUMAN

SOLD OUT

10/30 TH: TACOMA PARK, MAKE W/ SPOOKSTINA

1/10 SA: ABBEY ROAD LIVE (MATINEE AND EVENING SHOWS)

10/31 FR: HALLOWEEN PARTY W/ IDOL TALK, COLD CHOIR, DJ VAMPOISON, DJ VALEFOR

1/17 SA: MAGIC CITY HIPPIES W/ SUPERTASTE

NOVEMBER

FEBRUARY

11/1 SA: O.F., KILL THE BUDDHA,

PAINT WORK

2/10 TU: ELECTRIC GUEST W/ SNACKTIME

11/5 WE: MADILYN MEI W/ AMELIA DAY

10/25 SA: JUKEBOX THE GHOST W/ BOYS GO TO JUPITER

2/21 SA: PETER MCPOLAND

11/6 TH: NOELINE HOFMANN W/ BELLE FRANTZ

10/30 TH: WXYC HALLOWEEN DANCE 10/31 FR: SAXSQUATCH W/ DOUGISH

NOVEMBER 11/1 SA: DANTE HIGH W/ CAGE BIRD FANCIER 11/4 TU: BEACH FOSSILS W/ BEING DEAD 11/5 WE: VINCENT LIMA W/ CHANCE EMERSON

2/22 SU: BRISCOE 2/28 SA: MICHAEL SHANNON

& JASON NARDUCY AND FRIENDS PLAY R.E.M.’S LIFES RICH PAGEANT

11/10 MO: GEESE W/ DOVE ELLIS

3/30 MO: MADISON CUNNINGHAM

APRIL

11/11 TU: THE STEEL WHEELS 11/12 WE: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS:

CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

10/17 FR: SUGAR SNAP PEAS,

HUSBANDOS, NICOLE TESTER W/ CRUSHED

SOLD OUT

VANDELUX

10/19 SU: THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS

11/13 TH: BEAUTY SCHOOL DROPOUT W/ IN COLOR

10/20 MO: WYATT EASTERLING W/ A DIFFERENT THREAD

11/14 & 11/15 (FR/SA): WATCHHOUSE

SOLD OUT

11/21 FR: CARBON LEAF 11/29 SA: CRAZY CHESTER

10/21 TU: BILLY RAFFOUL W/ THEO KANDEL 10/22 WE: THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL

(LAST WALTZ TRIBUTE)

PLACE & I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE W/ MX LONELY AND GRAY YOUNG

DECEMBER

10/23 TH: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS:

12/2 TU: LITTLE IMAGE 12/4 TH: WILLIS W/ HOTEL FICTION 12/5 FR: SUSTO STRINGBAND,

OLIVER HAZARD

11/10 MO: THE BRUDI BROTHERS W/WILDMANS SOLD OUT

11/12 WE: MARIELLE KRAFT

4/20 MO: THE MOSS

PRESENTS: CAFUNÉ

11/8 SA: CHEZILE W/ ALEX BANIN

SOLD OUT

11/ 11 TU: POST ANIMAL

4/18 SA: ELIZA MCLAMB

10/18 SA: ANDMOREAGAIN

SOLD OUT

11/9 SU: LAMONT LANDERS

MARCH

OCTOBER

SOLD OUT

11/4 TU: LAYTO W/ KODE

11/7 FR: WEST 22ND W/ THE BACK ALLEY SOLD OUT

11/6 TH: FRENCH POLICE W/ SOCIAL ORDER 10/15 WE: THE RUNAROUNDS MINIVAN TOUR W/ WILLIAM WILD 11/7 FR: AJ LEE & BLUE SUMMIT + [10/16 TH: CANCELLED THE CRITICALS] EAST NASH GRASS 11/8 SA: LEITH ROSS W/ ANNIKA BENNETT

24 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

JANUARY

10/23 TH: RUSTON KELLY W/ SAM MACPHERSON

10/29 WE: KITTY CRAFT W/ AFTER

XANA

12/30 & 12/31: COSMIC CHARLIE

2/7 SA: JONAH KAGEN

10/28 TU: SUN ROOM W/ THE BENDS

TU 10/21 @ CAT'S CRADLE

PRESENTS: THE JINS

10/21 TU: XANA W/ SIENA LIGGINS (MOVED FROM LOCAL 506)

10/26 SU: NATION OF LANGUAGE W/ DEEPER

THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS

BORIS

10/27 MO: ANDMOREAGAIN

10/18 SA: INFINITY SONG WORLD TOUR II W/ THE BURNEY SISTERS

SU 10/19 @ CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

SG GOODMAN

12/9 TU: JD MCPHERSON W/ MELISSA CARPER

10/16 TH: SAM BURCHFIELD & THE SCOUNDRELS W/ PHILIP BOWEN

INFINITY SONG

FR 10/31 @ HAW RIVER BALLROOM

CAT'S CRADLE 10/15 WE: DESTROYER: DAN’S BOOGIE TOUR W/ JENNIFER CASTLE

SA 10/18 @ CAT'S CRADLE

SU 10/26 @ HAW RIVER BALLROOM

CONFETTI

10/24 FR: HARF. W/ ELIAS HIX 10/25 SA: WINTER W/ HUBBLE 10/26 SU: DR. BACON W/ JANDR

JANUARY 1/23 FR: JON SPENCER

MARCH 3/14 SA: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS:

TWEN

3/16 MO: SKULLCRUSHER

HAW RIVER BALLROOM (SAX) 10/17 FR: DON WAS AND THE PAN DETROIT ENSEMBLE PERFORM BLUES FOR ALLAH 10/25 SA: JENSEN MCRAE W/ KAHLEA LEE

SOLD OUT

10/26 SU: S.G. GOODMAN W/ FUST 10/31 FR: BORIS W/ AGRICULTURE 11/1 SA, 6:30 DOOR / 7:30 PM SHOW 11/2 SU 2:00 PM (TWO SHOWS):

COASTAL COHORTS PRESENT KING MACKEREL AND THE BLUES ARE RUNNING 11/12 WE: FLOCK OF DIMES W/ NATALIE JANE HILL 12/2 TU: BONNIE "PRINCE"

SOLD OUT

BILLY

W/ DAWN LANDES, MATT KIVEL

12/12 FR : JAKE XERXES FUSSELL 12/13 SA: CHATHAM COUNTY LINE

HOLIDAY TOUR

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W/ JOHNNY IRION, JAY BROWN

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11/21 FR: CAYLEE HAMMACK

6/21 SU: THE CHURCH

11/22 SA: SPEED STICK AND SAUL GOODE W/ BLACK MOSS

MOTORCO (DURHAM)

11/24 MO: SYDNEY ROSE W/ EMMA ANDERSEN, NOAH LEVINE

SOLD OUT

DECEMBER 12/3 WE: RYAN DAVIS + THE

10/24 FR: QUADECA

2/1 SU: NIGHT MOVES

THE RITZ (RALEIGH)

ROADHOUSE BAND

10/15 WE: 2HOLLIS –

W/ ARBOR LABOR UNION

THE STAR TOUR

12/6 SA: THE OLD CEREMONY

11/3 MO: VIAGRA BOYS

12/7 SU: CHOKECHERRY W/ THE SEWING CLUB 12/12 FR: ROBERT LESTER FOLSOM W/ LILY SEABIRD 12/13 SA: MAGNOLIA & JOHNSON

ELECTRIC CO.

12/20 SA: JOHN HOWIE JR. & THE ROSEWOOD BLUFF

W/ RAMONA AND THE HOLY SMOKES, REAL COMPANION

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT SOLD OUT

LOCAL 506 (CHAPEL HILL) 10/24 FR: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: MOLLY GRACE W/ MEG SMITH 11/12 WE: SYDNEY SPRAGUE W/ SHELLES, GABRIELLE GRACE 11/16 SU: PORCH LIGHT

CATSCRADLE.COM • 919.967.9053 300 E. MAIN STREET • CARRBORO

PAGE Gene Nichol PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE EXUM OF EXUMPHOTO

A Way Forward Gene Nichol’s new book, Now What? How North Carolina Can Blaze a Progressive Path Forward, tackles the tough political landscape Democrats are facing in 2025.

It also gives a reason for hope.

BY JASMINE GALLUP arts@indyweek.com

I

n a political era where many Democrats feel disheartened, shell-shocked, and numb to the parade of dictatorial edicts handed down by Trump during his second term, commentator and constitutional scholar Gene Nichol asks a question we’ve all dwelled on: “Now what?”

His answer is simple, but not easy: We fight.

For people like me, who grew up imagining they would inherit a bright liberal future replete with equal rights and politicians willing to dramatically improve education, give people a way out of poverty, and repair the damage of climate change, this is perhaps not the answer we want to hear. But, as Nichol, a longtime North Carolinian, incisively points out in his examination of the state’s cyclical history of progress and pushback, it is the only answer there is.

In a Southern state with a long history of racial violence, it’s past time to accept that we’re not always the “beacon of progress” we wish to be, Nichol argues. But there’s still

a place for optimism, even if it’s now a rare commodity, he writes on the same page. As much as North Carolina is a state of regressive conservatism, it’s also a state with a rich legacy of protest, with “North Carolina progressives carry[ing] an ever-ready willingness to fight for their state’s future,” Nichol writes.

Nichol finds hope in our election of Democrats in the 2024 statewide races, “where ruthlessly gerrymandered political districts could hold no sway.” He finds hope in the widespread protests that erupted when Judge Jefferson Griffin attempted to steal a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. And he, somewhat counterintuitively, finds hope in the fact that Republicans have had to obfuscate their true motives in order to lower taxes for the wealthy, take funding from public schools, and target civil rights.

As in his previous book, 2023’s Lessons from North Carolina, Nichol takes advantage of his deep knowledge of

state politics to pull back the curtain on Republican machinations, pointing to clear evidence that GOP leaders have waged an “enthusiastic” and “relentless” “war on democratic processes” since 2010. Even the most politically knowledgeable and engaged reader will learn something surprising and important about what the North Carolina General Assembly has been up to in the last 25 years.

Nichol is not afraid to use strong language—calling Phil Berger, Tim Moore, Jefferson Griffin, and the Republican contingent of the NC Supreme Court crooks, liars, and thieves—while making a convincing case that brutal honesty is what’s needed among Democrats if they want to mobilize voters.

The state’s “more mannerly anti-democratic crusade” is in direct contrast to Trump’s blatant attacks on democracy, Nichol writes. But in 2025, he argues, the GOP has “gone public”, and it’s time we do the same—stop pretending we’re on an equal playing field, stop pretending it’s just politics as usual, and stop pretending we don’t have an obligation to fight for democratic values.

Nichol presents a suite of ambitious state constitutional amendments he argues Democrats should aggressively back—similar to some enacted in other states—the most important of which is an amendment to create an independent redistricting commission. With Democratic victories in the 2026 and 2028 elections, he argues, a referendum that puts power back in the hands of the people is possible. Grassroots action is key.

“The last fifteen years have shown that victories won’t always readily come. Sometimes, we’ll lose—and lose again,” Nichol writes. “We’ll discover that part of our charge, often the most essential part, is that we not lose heart. Getting up off the mat can be the engaged citizen’s greatest attribute.”

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

25

STAGE

Profile in Courage Burning Coal Theatre is producing a series of ten readings of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play about the young American nonviolent activist crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003.

BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com

A

few pages into the script of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play drawn from the writings of the young American activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, the titular character meditates on the urban journey of salmon.

“The salmon talked me into a lifestyle change,” Rachel Corrie writes, describing how she learned that salmon sometimes find their way into underground channels in her home of the Pacific Northwest, where they must struggle upstream. “Once you know there are salmon down there, it’s hard to forget. You imagine their moony eyes while you walk home from the bar in your slutty boots. It’s hard to be extraordinarily vacuous when you always have the salmon in the back of your mind: in that pipe down there—on their way to daylight at Watershed Park.”

Passages like this position Corrie as both a gifted writer and young person with a remarkable capacity for empathy. At the time of her death, Corrie was standing in front of a Palestinian home, trying to protect it from being demolished.

The home was one of 3,000 Palestinian homes destroyed by Israeli forces between 2001 and 2003, per Amnesty International. A January 2025 report from Doctors Without Borders found that 92 percent of housing units in Gaza had been destroyed

by Israeli forces, alongside more than 1,000 structures destroyed in the West Bank, according to a United Nations report.

In September, Burning Coal Theatre launched a special series of ten staged readings, spanning ten months, of My Name Is 26 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

Rachel Corrie. The Burning Coal website has the full list of scheduled readings.

“I think she had a career in front of her, whether it would have been journalism or fiction or, you know, who knows?” says Jeff Zinn, the director of the series, reflecting on Corrie’s voice. “I mean, she was 23, for God’s sake, when she died. She had her whole life ahead of her.”

The play was written by the late actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, who drew text directly from 184 pages of Corrie’s emails and diaries, and premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2005. Formatted as a one-person play, the Burning Coal rendition engages multiple cohorts of readers. The first production was done by local artistic directors; a January reading will feature military members.

Events are free with a suggested donation of $10, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders and other international aid organizations working in Gaza, per the Burning Coal website.

Corrie’s parents, who have been outspoken activists in the wake of their daughter’s death two decades ago, are expected to attend one of the readings this year.

Since her death, Corrie has often been venerated as a kind of modern-day saint.

Throughout My Name Is Rachel Corrie, though, her words anchor her in earthly dimensions as a person with strong moral convictions, normal twentysomething instincts, and perhaps the occasional penchant for being overly flowery. Her character rattles off idiosyncratic lists, debates with her parents, and earnestly describes

ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF BURNING COAL THEATRE

what she sees around her. At one point, she tells her parents in an email, “I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers.”

At another, she writes of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. “I can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.”

Jerome M. Davis, artistic director at Burning Coal, says he felt moved to put the production on after watching the massive humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s offensive on Gaza.

“I just wanted to do something, and I

felt like this would be a good way to give people a chance to do it with me,” Davis says. “You know, not just post something online, right?”

Zinn, former artistic director of the celebrated Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater on Cape Cod, echoes those thoughts on the relevance.

“The conditions in Gaza now are so much worse than they were when she was there,” Zinn says. “I don’t think a Rachel Corrie would even be allowed to insert herself into the middle of the situation in Gaza today.”

“I think [Davis] is very brave to do this now, because I can only imagine that he will be drawing fire for producing this,” Zinn continues. “And to do it in such a high-pro-

Be prepared before the next power outage.

Cast members backtage at the September 7 reading of My Name Is Rachel Corrie PHOTO COURTESY OF BURNING COAL THEATRE

“I just wanted to do something, and I felt like this would be a good way to give people a chance to do it with me. You know, not just post something online, right?” file way—to not do it just once, but again and again and again and again, right? I think that’s incredibly brave.”

While Triangle locals have multiple chances to see this play reading, My Name is Rachel Corrie initially had a bumpy road to reaching American audiences. In 2006, following two sold-out runs in London, the play was scheduled to premiere at New York Theatre Workshop.

Opening night never happened: Several weeks before the premiere, the theater got cold feet and postponed the play, citing the need for more “contextualizing” of the material, a move that drew criticism from the likes of Tony Kushner and Vanessa Redgrave.

More cancellations across the country followed, and even when the play did open, it is painful, to read the sneering words from American reviewers. New Yorker critic John Lahr, for instance, described the character of Corrie at once as “manipulative” and “porous, a vessel for the projections of others.” Had no one ever met a headstrong twenty-something?

On the flip side, a groundswell of readings arose in protest of a cancellation that many felt was political censorship. Years later, the play has been staged many times internationally, including a previous run at Burning Coal Theatre, and Corrie’s words still feel electric, as if they could’ve been written yesterday.

The suffering that Corrie touches on pre-dates the war and famine happening today, the atrocities of October 7, and even the election of Hamas, which occurred three years after Corrie’s death.

It also predates the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, signed into place on October 9.

As both a portrait of an idealistic young woman and a snapshot of a horrific international conflict, these readings are well worth making time for. One takes away from Corrie’s writing a renewed desire to better consider the lives of others and the ripple effects of individual things—jobs, Amazon purchases, tax dollars—we participate in. To imagine, maybe, salmon swimming beneath us. W

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27

C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R WED 10/15 MUSIC 2hollis: The Star Tour 7 p.m.

The Ritz, Raleigh.

Ally J on the Roof 7:30 p.m.

The Durham Hotel, Durham.

Destroyer: Dan’s Boogie Tour 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Lucid Amethyst 7:30 p.m.

Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

The Runarounds 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Steve Morse Band 7 p.m.

Rialto Theatre, Raleigh.

Weave & Spin Performance Series and Open Mic 7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.

PAGE John T. Edge: House of Smoke 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Kamala Harris: 107 Days 7 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

STAGE Comedy Open Mic 8 p.m.

Hangout Bar & Grill, Cary.

Justice Theater Project presents Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really Oct. 10-26, various times. Umstead Park United Church of Christ, Raleigh.

Man of La Mancha Oct. 10-19, various times. Forest Theater, Chapel Hill.

Once Oct. 9-26, various times. Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh.

WLW Open Mic Comedy Hour 7:45 p.m. Club ERA, Durham.

The Wolves Oct. 8-26, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

THUR 10/16 MUSIC Autumn Sounds, 10 Stories Up 5:30 p.m. The Westin Raleigh-Durham, Raleigh.

Billie Eilish Oct. 16 and 17, 7 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

The Criticals 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Green Jelly, 96 Bitter Beings, The Bunny The Bear, The Convalescence, Ignominious 6 p.m. Chapel of Bones, Raleigh.

Gregory Santa Croce and Science Fiction 7:30 p.m.

Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Ryan Bingham and The Texas Gentlemen: The All Night Long Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Sam Burchfield & The Scoundrels 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Stardew Valley Oct. 16 and 17, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Thursday Jazz Jams 7 p.m.

Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

28 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

PAGE Taylor Hartley: Song of the Hell Witch 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

STAGE Legacies of Love: Poetry Reading and Community Discussion 12:30 p.m.

Golden Fig Books, Carrboro.

LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD?

Lovell Bradford Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

North Carolina Opera: Cinderella Oct. 17 and 19, 7:30 p.m. Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh.

Rebecca Porter 6:30 p.m.

Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

The Seven Deadly Sins Oct. 16-Nov. 2, various times.

Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Sugar Snap Peas, Husbandos, Nicole Tester 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Terror, Titties, and Trombones! 8:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Tedeschi Trucks Band 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

FRI 10/17 MUSIC An Evening with Aching Back Sunday 7 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.

Copland Symphony No. 3 with the North Carolina Symphony Oct. 17 and 18, 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Deciduous Feat. Baalti 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Don Was and the PanDetroit Ensemble 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Eric Hirsh 7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

Gigi Perez 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

High + Tight: A Lifetime of Soul, Funk, and Disco Fridays at 8 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.

Band Together’s 2025 Mighty Giveback concert, featuring Gov’t Mule 5 p.m.

Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

The Brunch Set: SingAlong Saturdays at Missy Lane’s 11 a.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

Cafuné 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Delta Rae 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Gabe Lee, Jason Eady 7pm The Pinhook, Durham.

Infinity Song World Tour II 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Tooth, Make, Doomsday Profit 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Seether & Daughtry 6 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Winyah 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Stephanie Nakasian 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

STAGE Blue Box Theatre Presents: Frankenstein Oct. 17-Nov. 2, various times. Epilogue Books, Chapel Hill.

STAGE 5th Annual Bullhorn Fest 1 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

Hot Bucket Comedy Night 7 p.m. Common Market, Durham Steve Martin & Martin Short 4 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

SUN 10/19 MUSIC Annie Leeth, Mellow Swells 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

The Legendary Pink Dots 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Sunday Jazz Brunch with Al Strong Sundays at 11 a.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

PAGE Reads Like Teen Spirit Halloween Party 1 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Broken Records: Musical Comedy Improv 8 p.m.

Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

SAT 10/18 MUSIC Austin Royale, UNIITY LIVE!, Survival Tactics, Sun Shower, Vanny Preem 10:30pm The Pinhook, Durham.

THE BAAT RAVE 10 p.m.

The Fruit, Durham.

Follow burgeoning West Coast pop rock artist Xana as she takes listeners on “adventures with explosive arrangements, heartfelt moments, and bright, courageous attitude” on October 21 at Cat’s Cradle. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R

FIND OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR AT INDYWEEK.COM/CALENDAR

MON 10/20 MUSIC Gary Numan 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

STAGE Cosmic Chuckles: StandUp Comedy New Material Nights 7 p.m. Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, Raleigh.

TUES 10/21 MUSIC An Evening with The Riverside 6 p.m. Atlantic Gardening, Raleigh.

Billy Raffoul 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Diana Ross 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Mystery Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Matisyahu, Aaron Dugan 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Mudvayne L.D. 50 25th Anniversary Tour 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Xana 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

WED 10/22 MUSIC

PAGE Ghost Tales from The Devils Done Come Back 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Choco, 13DGE, FiNE$$E THA PHANTOM 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Nnenna Freelon: Beneath the Skin of Sorrow 6 p.m.

Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Lamp: Future Behind Me 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

STAGE

Frail Talk 7 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Romeo and Juliet Oct 23-November 2, various times. Titmus Theatre, Raleigh.

THE SWORD, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Moon Destroys 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die 7:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

SCREEN Twilight in Concert 7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

SCREEN Movie Loft presents Death Screams 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

FRI 10/24

PAGE

MUSIC

Penn & Kim Holderness: All You Can Be with ADHD 6 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Carrie Marshall 8 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.

THUR 10/23 MUSIC City Lights Jazz 7:30 p.m.

Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Confetti 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

PINKEYE, Secret Monkey Weekend, Lemon Sparks 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Ruston Kelly: Pale, Through the Window Tour 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Conrad Tao 7:30 p.m.

Baldwin Auditorium, Durham. harf. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Jim Ketch Swingtet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Molly Grace 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

NBA YoungBoy, Offset, Toosii, DeeBaby, Mellow Rackz, Baby Mel, Lil Dump, k3 7 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Olkoth, Human Infection, Basura, & Purulency 7 p.m.

Chapel of Bones, Raleigh.

Quadeca 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Tha Materials / Great Scott 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

PAGE Jeyamohan: Stories of True 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

STAGE Bassem Youssef Live 8 p.m.

DPAC, Durham.

SAT 10/25 MUSIC The Conjure Presents: STUDDAWEEN 10:30 p.m.

The Pinhook, Durham.

MATMOS 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Jensen McRae: The Praying For Your Downfall Tour 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Jukebox The Ghost: The Phantasmagorical Tour 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Lawrence: The Family Business Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience 7:30 p.m.

Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.

Saturday Night Dance Party at The Velvet Hippo!

9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.

The Some of It All 7:30 p.m.

Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Tate McRae 7:30 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Winter 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

SCREEN The Rocky Horror Picture Show 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

SUN 10/26

TUES 10/28 MUSIC Cole Pulice 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

MUSIC Dr. Bacon 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Jazz Brunch with Al Strong Sundays at 11 a.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

Don Dixon and Robert Kirkland: Songs and Stories from Franklin Street in the Early 70s 7:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Lenny Pearce’s USA Toddler Techno Tour Part II 7 p.m.

The Ritz, Raleigh.

Live Jazz with Joseph Silvers 11 a.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.

North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Mexican Slum Rats, Hattricks, Silent Piece 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Sun Room 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Nation of Language 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

S.G. Goodman 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

PAGE Darren Farrell: Lion in Bed PAJAMA PARTY! 2 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

MON 10/27

PAGE Gene Nichol: Now What?

7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Sasha Laurens: When I Picture You 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

STAGE SIX The Musical Oct. 28-Nov. 2, various times. DPAC, Durham.

MUSIC The Jins 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

SCREEN The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Silent film with live chamber music accompaniment 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

October 15, 2025 INDYweek.com

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PUZZLES CROSSWORD

RELEASE DATE—Sunday, October 12, 2025

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle

To download a pdf of this puzzle or view its solution, visit indyweek.com/puzzles-page

Edited by Patti Varol

90 Fortnite Frenz 4 123 Dish in a bowl Ever Blaster, for 124 “My stars!” one 125 Episcopal figure 92 Select with a 126 Stealthy flyers mouse 127 Clark from ACROSS 93 Milk source in Smallville 1 Sandos with two the Sahara 128 Wildlife refuges spreads 96 Mural on plaster 129 Walled Spanish 5 Restaurant 98 Subject that city chain includes set 130 Dig like a pig co-founded by theory 131 Seeks chef Matsuhisa information 9 Star’s entourage 100 Prefix with natal 14 “You know you 101 USPS abbr.

102 __ Loops DOWN want to!”

1 Salmon, to 18 Floor plan unit 104 Court target 106 Barely sufficient bears 19 Country with 108 Subject that 2 __ Raton a Persianincludes gender 3 “Boom Boom” speaking theory blues legend majority 110 Islanders’ 4 “__ and the 20 Operational NHL division, Bandit” launch time familiarly 5 “Candyman” 21 Yours, in hymns 111 Animation director DaCosta 22 Unoriginal reply collectibles 6 Brutish Tolkien 23 Checkbook no. characters 24 Flanged support 112 Stumble over 113 List of 7 Approach that pieces specialized emphasizes 25 Actress Bailey fundamentals terms 26 Big Apple team 8 Disentangles 116 “Dos Mujeres” 28 Alpine course 9 Group that can painter 30 Spoke like a play a symphony 119 Football features boxer 10 “I can’t wait!”

31 Explorer Erikson 120 Scrub, as a 11 Stuff in a pump mission 33 Into the latest bottle 121 Sporty car roof gadgets 34 Call made behind one’s back?

36 Stayed in line 38 Div. of Labor 39 Williams with four Olympic gold medals 40 Holiday cusp 41 Hoppy beer 42 Snatch quickly 44 Specter 46 Ready for a break 48 Lake near Carson City 50 Charcuterie board selections 52 Retired record holder?

54 Production 55 Omega preceder 56 Activist Yoko 57 Stick on a pub wall 61 Multivolume ref.

63 Herb on a bánh mì sandwich 66 Govt. securities 67 Capacious craft 69 Rescue op 71 Knock, in slang 72 Artemis org.

74 “__ complicated” 75 Can refuse to 77 Treats flavored with syrup 80 River project 82 Went in circles 84 Siglo de __: era of El Greco and Cervantes 85 Patterned after 86 Long-legged wader 89 Billy of “Titanic”

“BUILT TO SCALE” BY DOUG PETERSON

www.regulatorbookshop.com

720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 10-6 Daily |KU SUDOKU SU|DO

Difficulty level: MEDIUM

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page or scan this QR code for a link. Best of luck, and have fun!

30 INDYweek.com October 15, 2025

10/12/25

12 Guaranteed winner 13 Workplaces for triage nurses: Abbr.

14 Leafy vegetable 15 More opalescent 16 Ashore, perhaps 17 Mocked playfully 21 “What a shame” 27 Sustained attack 29 Phonetic symbol 30 Furnace meas.

32 Pres. who created the “alphabet agencies” 35 Not cool 36 Breakfast sometimes prepared overnight 37 Ho-hum 39 Helmet feature 43 Pet welfare org.

45 “Yer lyin’!”

47 South Indian rice cake 49 “You __ it to yourself ... ” 51 Word rapper Bow Wow dropped from his stage name

53 Nursery 83 Clear of containers condensation 58 Footwear for 87 Drink with a boulderers, and domed lid what can be 88 Toffee candy bar found in this 91 __ the bill puzzle’s circled 92 Sass letters 93 Made a two59 Final: Abbr. piece chess 60 Squiggly letter move 62 Hygiene tool on 94 Just OK a spool 95 Like axolotls 64 Loves to bits 97 Colorful 65 “How many character? sugars?,” 99 Flix sister station quaintly 103 Actor Funches 67 Lee with two of Apple TV+’s Best Director “Loot” Oscars 105 One on the 68 “West Coast” stump singer Lana 107 “North to the Del __ Future” state 70 Powerful engine 109 Persuasive named for its columns shape 110 __ compass 73 Mountain pose, 114 Focal points for one 115 “Let’s do it!”

76 Stunned hashtag state 117 Knucklehead 78 Baseball team’s 118 Decides starting lineup, 120 Gardner of e.g.

“Show Boat” 79 Pester 122 LAX clock 81 Feel rotten setting

©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Lead Pipin Lead Piping Group, Inc., on complex $124,051 https://car JobDetail/3

INDY CLASSIFIEDS CLASSY@INDYWEEK.COM

ANSWER TO TODAY’S PUZZLE

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ental ange

CL ASSIFIED HEALTH & WELL BEING

l ition r e?

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EMPLOYMENT

9/28/25

Lead Piping Designer Lead Piping Designer at Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., Cary NC: Lead piping design execution on complex projects. Hybrid schedule. Salary: $124,051 - $138,600 /yr. Apply at: https://careers.jacobs.com/en_US/careers/ JobDetail/31146

Data Analytics Manager Data Analytics Manager, IQVIA Inc., (Multi Opngs) Durham, NC. Mst teleco frm anywh in U.S. Anlyz, doc & prsnt resp to cmplx queries raised by int & ext clts. M-F, 8:30a - 5p EST. Salry Rnge: $105,827- $154,300/yr. Reqs bach/mast in BA/ Math/ Stat/ Econ /Life Sci/ rel/ equiv. Reqs w/ bach 3 yrs/ w/ mast 1 yr data anlytcs exp incl (if bach 3 yrs/if mast 1 yr): pharma spply chn exp; use data vis tools incl PowerBI; MS Access; perf DB query w/ SQL; use info srvcs ind & pharma mrktplc knwl to undrstnd data offrng & proc. Apply: res to: USRecruitment@iqvia.com & ref#118224.

Project Manager Project Manager, IQVIA Inc., Durham, NC. May teleco frm East Coast & rpt to WS. Collab w/ bus dev on pharmacoviglnce business pre-sales acts. M-F, 8a - 5p EST w/ OT & wknds. Sal range: $136,822 - $158,300/yr. Reqs Bach / Mast in CS, Engg, Engg Mgmt, IT, Math / rel / equiv. Reqs 5 yrs w/ Bach / 3 yrs w/ Mast, prog SW dev mgmt exp to incl 3 yrs (w/ Bach / Mast): PM incl drftng proj plns; stakehldr mgmt; comm proj status, rpts, risk assess, mitigatng plns; validtng proj scope, budg & sched; use CRM, CPQ / CLM salesforce BA; bus anlys incl reqs gather; wkg on agile scrum team; use Jira, Confluence / any cust tool. Reqs < 10% US & intl trv. Apply: res to: USRecruitment@iqvia.com & ref #117651.

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LAST PRINT ISSUE’S CROSSWORD SOLUTION ANSWER TO TODAY’S PUZZLE

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31