At least four people have indicated they will run for mayor of Fayetteville this year.
The election is in November.
The candidates are:
- Four-term Mayor Mitch Colvin. There has been speculation that Colvin will not run this year. “Assume I’m running until I say otherwise,” he told CityView.
- Five-term City Council Member Kathy Keefe Jensen of City Council District 1. She is the mayor pro tem. Jensen told CityView last week she plans to run.
- City Council Member Mario “Be” Benavente of Council District 3. Benavente is in his second term. His plan to run for mayor has been one of Fayetteville’s worst-kept secrets the past several months. He officially announced it with a news conference on Tuesday outside City Hall.
- Previous mayoral and legislative candidate Freddie de la Cruz. He had unsuccessful runs for mayor in 2022 and 2023, and an unsuccessful bid for a House seat in the N.C. General Assembly in 2024.
The candidate filing period for the 2025 Fayetteville City Council race is from noon July 7 to noon July 18. With more than two candidates in the mayoral election, there will be a primary on Oct. 7. Then the general election for Fayetteville and the other Cumberland County municipalities is Nov. 4.
Benavente makes it official
At a news conference outside City Hall on Tuesday, Benavente stood in front of about 20 supporters who proudly donned bright yellow Benavente campaign shirts.
He said his campaign will focus on how to address the root causes of crime in Fayetteville, such as mental health, a lack of affordable housing, insufficient childcare and a shortage of high-paying jobs.
“Fayetteville can be a home for all of us, and as your mayor, I’ll be the man in the arena fighting to make that dream a reality,” Benavente said. “We can create that reality by owning a lot of our city’s narratives. We can be the safest city in the state. We can be the best city for business in the state. We can be the best place to raise a family. But that can’t happen if our neighbors feel unheard, unsafe, or that the city doesn’t care if they come or they go. But as your mayor, I’m ready to take our city to the next level.”
Benavente said he is ready to face Colvin, who has dominated every mayoral election since he defeated then-incumbent Nat Robertson in 2017.
“Whether Mayor Colvin decides to enter the race or not, we’re certainly prepared for that,” Benavente said. “But we’re here about the issues . . . and those are the things that we’re running for. We’re not running against anybody.”
Colvin, Jensen, de la Cruz, and other candidates
Beyond his statement that people should consider him a candidate until he says he isn’t, the mayor on Tuesday declined to discuss his plans further. “Right now we’re still in the midst of a lot of projects, so I’m concentrating on that,” Colvin said.
Jensen on Tuesday said she has not made a formal announcement of her candidacy and declined to further discuss it until then.
De la Cruz told CityView he will make a third attempt for the mayoral seat. He said he plans to do a “DOGE in Fayetteville,” referencing presidential advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE has been tasked with cutting the size of the federal government.
“Freddie’s going to DOGE Fayetteville, and Dave Boliek is his Elon Musk,” de la Cruz said, referencing State Auditor Dave Boliek. The legislature may pass a law this year to have Boliek’s office recommend cuts to the state government.
Boliek on Tuesday did not respond to a request for comment on de la Cruz’s statement about him.
Cumberland County Republican Party Chair Bruce Sykes told CityView that the local GOP expects to run Fayetteville City Council candidates in the fall election.
“I’m sure that we’re gonna have Republicans running for those offices at the midterms,” Sykes said. “I just don’t know who they are yet and probably won’t know until it gets closer to the filing deadline.”
Former Fayetteville City Council Member Bobby Hurst is a founder of the Independent Conservative Alliance Political Action Committee, a conservative group that aims to recruit and promote high-quality conservative candidates in Cumberland County. Hurst told CityView the PAC is meeting on March 29 to discuss potential mayoral and city council candidates.
“There are a few people we’ve talked to, and I’m not going to mention their names yet because they haven’t decided that they are going to run for certain,” Hurst said. “But they are very good people, well-known in the community, and so we’re just going to discuss that and target probably four districts with candidates that we’ll be recruiting as well.”
You don’t have to be in a political party to run
The city council elections are nonpartisan races for nonpartisan offices, although some candidates and the political parties have tried to treat them unofficially as partisan. The nonpartisan nature has notable effects:
- The primary for the mayor race (and for the other city council races) will have all candidates face each other, instead of being broken up into individual political party primaries. The top two vote-getters in the primary will advance to the general election, and they could be of the same political party.
- Independent candidates can file to run for mayor or a city council seat just as easily as candidates from the state’s eight government-approved political parties. For example, current Fayetteville City Council Member Deno Hondros is politically independent. (State law makes it difficult for unaffiliated candidates to get their names on ballots in partisan elections, such those for county Board of Commissioners, governor, seats in the legislature and for Congress.)
Colvin, Jensen and Benavente are Democrats; de la Cruz is a Republican.
As of Saturday, the state Board of Elections office reported there are 129,968 registered voters in the Fayetteville city limit. Of these:
- 55,431 are Democrats.
- 47,728 are independent voters (also called unaffiliated voters).
- 24,602 are Republicans.
- 2,207 voters are split among the Libertarian, Constitution, No Labels, Green, Justice For All, and We The People political parties.
Government Accountability Reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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