Overview:
• Mayor Mitch Colvin and Council Member Kathy Jensen won the Oct. 7 primary
• Both are Democrats
• De la Cruz wants to offer voters a Republican option
• Even if he loses, will his campaign change the outcome?
Freddie de la Cruz, who placed fifth in Fayetteville’s 10-candidate primary election for mayor, has launched a write-in campaign to challenge primary winners Mitch Colvin and Kathy Keefe Jensen.
“I’m just putting my name out there to give people an option other than the status quo,” de la Cruz told CityView on Friday. “There’s two Democrats on the ballots. The people in favor of the Republicans want to vote for a Republican. They want to vote for a mayor that’s a Republican. They can come out and vote for Freddie.”
The last time Fayetteville saw a serious write-in campaign in its city council elections was 2019, when the Cumberland County Democratic Party advanced Dominique Ashley against independent District 3 incumbent Tisha S. Waddell. Waddell won with 75.75% of the vote.
Waddell ran for mayor this year, and came in fourth place, ahead of de la Cruz. She had received the endorsement of prominent Cumberland County Republicans who operate a local political action committee.
Although the mayor and Fayetteville City Council elections are nonpartisan, de la Cruz has campaigned on being a Republican. Mayor Colvin and Council Member Jensen are Democrats.
Fayetteville is dominated by Democratic and independent voters—fewer than one out of five is a Republican. The last Republican mayor was Nat Robertson, whom Colvin defeated in 2017. Including the mayor, the current city council has eight Democrats, one Republican, and one independent.
According to North Carolina State Board of Elections data, Fayetteville has 131,375 registered voters. Their partisan breakdown:
- Democrats: 55,297, or 42.09%
- Independent/unaffiliated: 50,189, or 38.20%
- Republicans: 24,681, or 18.79%
- Libertarians and Green Party members: 1,208, or 0.92%
With Fayetteville’s typically low-turnout municipal elections, de la Cruz thinks a mobilized Republican base plus what he described as “disgruntled Democrats” and unaffiliated voters “tired of the status quo” can make him competitive.
“And truth of the matter is, we’ll see what happens on Nov. 4. Who knows?” he said. “I may come in second. … And that will be a story within itself.”
So de la Cruz doesn’t expect to win?
“I think I can win, though, if people come out,” he said, citing the 12,683 voters who picked him a year ago when he had an unsuccessful run for a House seat in the N.C. General Assembly. His opponent, Democrat Charles Smith, received 20,941 votes.
In addition to seeking the state House seat in 2024, de la Cruz has run for mayor three times since 2022.
Colvin had little to say on Friday about de la Cruz’s revived campaign.
“I hadn’t heard anything about it. Just going to focus on my end,” he said via text message.
Even if de la Cruz does not win, Jensen said, he could pull votes from both her and Colvin and influence the outcome.
“Well, I think in an election that every vote counts. It can affect it tremendously,” she told CityView.
“Freddie has run for mayor several times,” Jensen said. “Voters have clearly made their minds up that he is not the right candidate for Fayetteville. I respect that, and that’s why I am focused on my race and vision to move our community forward.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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