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George Knott
George Knott ran for election for Mayor of Raleigh in North Carolina. He lost in the general election on October 8, 2019.
Knott completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. Click here to read the survey answers.
Elections
2019
See also: Mayoral election in Raleigh, North Carolina (2019)
General election
General election for Mayor of Raleigh
The following candidates ran in the general election for Mayor of Raleigh on October 8, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Mary-Ann Baldwin (Nonpartisan) | 38.2 | 20,861 |
 | Charles Francis (Nonpartisan) | 31.1 | 17,017 | |
 | Caroline Sullivan (Nonpartisan) | 20.5 | 11,191 | |
 | Zainab Baloch (Nonpartisan) | 6.5 | 3,553 | |
 | Justin Sutton (Nonpartisan) | 2.1 | 1,125 | |
 | George Knott (Nonpartisan)  | 1.4 | 741 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.3 | 142 | ||
| Total votes: 54,630 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign themes
2019
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
George Knott completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Knott's responses.
What would be your top three priorities, if elected?
1) Stop subsidizing business to move downtown with cash intensives and tax abatement. Allow Raleigh to grow organically. 2) Increase public and affordable housing. Hold developers feet to the fire. Deny building permits for new high rises unless the developer agrees to set aside a percent of the new construction for affordable housing 3) Combat gentrification; set up a system similar to California prop 13 to help keep working class people and seniors in their homes and not forced out due to increased taxes from the value of their neighborhoods rising around them
What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?
I would like to see the city (and state and federal governments) shift from a supply side, trickle down economy to a demand side model. The current system has poured capital in to the top to attract large corporations and businesses but at the expense of the citizens of Raleigh who have been forced into a spiral of downward mobility. My number one goal is to stop this irresponsible and immoral action of subsidizing industry with citizen tax dollars with the result of our working residents are being priced out of their homes and neighborhoods. Let business run business, let the city government help those that the free market will not by creating opportunity for everyone
Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?
Both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt; they were both bold leaders who were willing to implement bold and progressive polices to help steer the nation out of crisis. I find their leadership and belief in themselves and their ideas (which were new and untested) inspirational.
Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?
How to Kill a City ~ P.E. Moskowitz The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ~John Maynard Keynes A Short History of Progress ~Ronald Wright On the Grid ~Scott Huler I can go on and on
What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?
A mayor needs to be honest, have integrity, a strong moral compass, a grasp of history, openness, and an understanding of law and policy. They must be completely devoted to the continuance; there is no room for ego or self serving political climbers. A person who wants to be mayor is most likely unfit for the job
What legacy would you like to leave?
Of course, any politician should answer 'to leave the city a better place than I found it’. Years of city sponsored private sector growth, unchecked development, and lack of keeping up with the needs of the poor and underserved citizens have left the city in a pretty poor place on almost every front except as a capital generator for the rich. It's going to take a long time to put Raleigh back on the right track. If my legacy was I was the mayor who slowed down growth, reigned in development and started a serious effort to help the citizens who have been ignored, I would be thrilled
What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?
I watched the Challenger blow up live on NASA TV in my 3rd grade classroom when I was 8 years old. Of course I remember events before then but that was the first event that I remember as being a significant point in history beyond any adult telling me that it was
What was your very first job? How long did you have it?
My first job was playing Christmas carols on the tuba at Wellspring Grocery (Now Whole Foods) on Wade ave when I was 16. I've been a freelance musician ever since. It ain't pretty, but it's a living.
What is your favorite book? Why?
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight ~James Tobin. Not for any connection to North Carolina; rather it's the story of how three siblings (Orville, Wilbur, and there oft ignored sister Katherine) took a methodical and organized look at a problem, broke it down into basic components, and work shopped each small part at its most basic level and combined the solutions to achieve what had been thought to be impossible. It then turns to the story of how the same people stifled the organic development of their idea by holding it tightly and stopped any possible progress for decades. It is truly the story of Icarus played out in modern times and holds deep lessons for anyone who is involved in the problem solving aspect of leadership, innovation, engineering or even city building.
A mayor is a leader in his or her city. What does that mean to you?
A mayor makes themselves available to the citizens. They are the figurehead of the city government. They cut ribbons. They take the heat when anything messes up. They distract the people from who is actually running the city. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Nothing to see here folks, just mayorin'
What do you love most about your city?
I was born here, Raleigh is my home. My Great Great Great Great Grandfather is buried in Oakwood cemetery and one day I’ll be buried here too. We are a quaint, small, southern town that has had the misfortune of having a string of city leaders, most not from here, who think Raleigh should be a powerhouse. That’s not Raleigh. You can’t redefine a city by adding high-rises. You can destroy a city that way and that’s what’s happening. I love that Raleigh isn’t Charlotte, it’s not Atlanta, or Seattle. I wish everyone could have seen Raleigh around 1985. Downtown was alive, it was funky, it was a little dangerous after dark. It was weird. You could go talk to the mayor at his gas station. There weren’t any pretentious restaurants or chain coffee shops down there. It was organic, it was alive. All the big companies were out in RTP where they belong. Downtown was law offices by day and seedy clubs at night. I don’t recognize most of it now. The next crash will be the corporate bubble and I won’t recognize Raleigh after it crashes much either; but I hope what comes out on the other end will be a quaint, small, southern town with room for everyone to live and work and play. Look at Raleigh’s bones, growth isn’t our friend. I don’t want to make Raleigh what it was; I want to help it become what it should have been. I love it that much. That’s why I’m running for Mayor
What do you perceive to be your city's greatest challenges over the next decade?
We are in the middle of an affordable housing crisis and Raleigh is the only city with a rising homeless population in the state. These are tied directly to the growth that the city has experienced over the last 20 years. The only way forward is to slow growth and start taking care of the citizens of Raleigh. There is no way around that
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Knott's campaign website stated the following:
| “ | My Platform; 18 steps to the Raleigh Mambo
We’re all in this together, folks
Open containers are illegal. Public intoxication is illegal. Operating a motor vehicle under the influence is illegal. Playing Jon Bon Jovi on a boom box at full blast anywhere should be illegal. Let’s send these abominations back to Myrtle Beach where they belong.
Seriously, it’s the Wild West down there. Let’s finish turning it back into a motorway and put a proper center line down the middle
Mission Accomplished
Here in Raleigh we have an amazing greenway. It’s 117 miles of natural trails and walkways that connect many neighborhoods and parks. But it has reoccurring problems that need to be fixed. Just one example: the section between Atlantic and Capital had pilings washed out by Hurricane Matthew in 2016. The repairs took 18 months to complete, and they lasted 4 months before the trail was washed out again only a few hundred feet upstream. City estimates put the finished repair in spring of 2020. There is currently no viable detour. This is just one of seven closures posted. We have a great Greenway system that is crippled by maintenance issues. We need a sustainable solution instead of throwing more money at unfixable problems.
When a police officer stops you, the first thing he asks for is your driver’s license so he knows who committed the offense. With red light cameras, there is no way of knowing who was driving. A photograph is not positive identification; to treat it as such violates your due process. Red light cameras are a money-making business that puts a little money in the city’s pocket and a lot of money in the red light camera operator’s pocket. Let’s drop the red light camera scam. If you’ve ever run a red light, you are entitled to be stopped by a real police officer, not sent a Dear John letter from a camera. You deserve better.
There is no pride to be found in anything but a rake.
Put an end to slash and burn model of city building
If you look across Raleigh, you’d be surprised to learn we actually have a set of rules and guidelines for new construction which used to be reasonable. It’s called the Unified Development Ordnance (UDO) and it’s a fascinating read. It’s also being ignored all over the town. We used to have a five-story limit on building height, and 50-foot setbacks from the street. The latest UDO allows for buildings up to 40 stories and setbacks of only 5 feet. I used to walk around hopping mad that the city council was granting permission to go around the UDO but it seems like they’ve changed it recently to make it easier for developers to build their gaudy towers and shopping centers that don’t fit in with our skyline and sit right up to the street. Look, Raleigh is growing, and growing fast. We can’t stop it but we don’t need to encourage it. These high-rise buildings don’t help the people of Raleigh, they help developers and highly skilled/highly paid workers who move here for work. I don’t care about highly skilled workers who want to move here; I care about the people who are already here. I don’t care about developers. They are extremely motivated self-starters and don’t need special treatment from the City Council. They are going to come out on top no matter what. Speaking of, do you know how many builders, developers and architects have sat on the city council for the last 20 years? No wonder they want to move regulations out of the way.
My mother used to say ‘When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ Well, half of our City Council is either in the building trade or in the pockets of developers and Raleigh is getting nailed in a bad way.
All over Raleigh, a ranch house or bungalow is sold, a developer comes in, knocks down the house and carries it off in a dump truck. Then they clear-cut the lot bare as a baby’s bottom in anticipation of a McMansion. It’s tacky, it’s environmentally negligent, and it should be against code. I want an incentive so attractive to developers that they will leave old growth trees standing or make a penalty so harsh they won’t dare touch a tree outside the footprint of the new building. Trees clean our air, they keep out heat in the summer, and they prevent erosion. Our natural heritage is written in the sky with branches that ascend to the stars and form an unending canopy. Except where the McMansions grow. The lack of trees over new developed neighborhood is shocking and will take a century to turn around. Stop cutting down healthy trees
Flooding happens. But it’s happening a lot more in Raleigh than it should. We pull up trees, we subject our lawns to hurricane-force leaf blower winds on the weekly, we bulldoze hills and valleys and creeks for strip malls, and we wonder why our city is washing away. We need to stop treating our city drainage like it is an impediment to progress and realize our ‘progress’ is causing major problems. It all starts with your neighborhood storm drains and ends up in our creeks and rivers. It’s all linked and we need to see where we can undo damage that is done,and make sure any forward development includes environmental impact studies and that the city has the teeth to enforce the law and hold violators accountable
It’s bigger than you think.
Raleigh is in an Affordable housing crisis. Our most precious natural resource is land, and affordable housing is being razed and replaced by high-dollar condos, apartments, and single-family houses at an alarming rate. We need to pump the brakes. Wintershaven, Tara East, North Hills Terrace, Whitaker Park, Lantern Square, Northside, Halifax Court; these were homes to people who lived and worked here, and now they are all gone, bulldozed to the ground by developers and replaced by housing that is out of the price of anyone displaced by the destruction. We have to turn this around. I fully support denying rezoning applications that don’t include affordable housing. High-end housing alone is not in the public interest and this should be reason enough to turn away rezoning requests. The affordable housing need not be on site of new developments, but can be in another area of town serviced by public transportaion. You want to put up 200 luxury condos? Sure, now find a site to build 50 affordable units also. That’s 4:1 ratio; 25%. It’s not enough to solve the problem but it’s a good place to start.
This is not a penalty in any way. As far as Section 8 Housing is concerned, the federal government and the Department of Housing and Urban Development guarantee payment under the Housing Act of 1937. Modest and efficient dwellings could be profitably built for low-income working citizens without government housing assistance. Affordable housing isn’t sexy, it isn’t high profile, but it is a solid and reliable money maker and we need more affordable housing. Developers have been playing reverse Robin Hood for too long, robbing from the poor and giving to the rich. It makes me sick and it should make you sick too and if it doesn’t, you’re probably a piece of garbage.
Auxiliary Dwelling Units (also known as Granny Flats and Accessory DU) were approved by the City Council earlier this year if you have your neighborhood rezone for an overlay. That means if you want one you have to get the 10 acres surrounding you rezoned. You think the City Council is bad, try to get 60 neighbors to agree on anything. Ditch the overlay rule, and let people build in their backyards. We need more affordable housing; this is a great way to put a dent in the problem and put some money back into citizen’s hands
Raleigh is growing fast and that’s showing up in real estate prices. I want to propose a property tax system where the value your house is taxed on is tied to the purchase price of your house, and not the current market value. I have a friend who bought a house at $120K 9 years ago and today his house has a tax value of $268K. His neighbor, a senior citizen bought his house 40 years ago for $32K. He is retired and the ever-increasing tax burden is straining his finances. I want everyone to pay their fair share, but if a developer puts up a few McMansions on your block, it’s not fair that you have to pay more every year. It is bad enough you have to look at McMansions. I want to work with the county tax office to give relief to our existing residents so they aren’t forced out of their homes by neighborhood gentrification.
Transportation - How I stopped worrying and learned to love the road
Seriously, we all hate you. Stop trying to turn left. Go up a block, make three rights and wait to cross at the light, you monster. Exceptions of course where there are pre-existing left turn lanes (St Mary’s Street, Dixie Trail, and Faircloth Street)
I intend to propose a plan to buy the assets of the Durham-Orange light rail transit, for pennies on the dollar. Then I’ll run a light rail from downtown Raleigh to Garner and Knightdale. You had your chance Durham, and you blew it. Thanks Duke, now Wake Tech students will reap the rewards. The proposed light rail will connect downtown Raleigh with a branch going west down the length of Hillsborough St. past the fairgrounds, ending at Ol’ Time BBQ, half way to Cary; traveling east down New Bern Ave. onto Highway 64 Business and through Knightdale, ending at Smithfield BBQ ; and south down Wilmington St, on to Hammond Rd, and ending at The Original Carolina BBQ on Highway 70 in Garner. There are no rail-worthy BBQ restaurants at which to terminate a northern spur.
Where you’ve got room for bike lanes, you have room for trolley tracks. Raleigh had a great electric trolley system all throughout downtown for decades. The rails are still buried beneath the streets in downtown Raleigh. Bikes belong on the road, not in their own lane. We start by removing all the bike lanes and laying rail right down the middle of the road. Bike lanes are dangerous for riders, diesel buses like the R line are unsightly and dirty, and electric trolleys are fun and green!
Pet Projects
Raleigh needs a comprehensive ordinance that protects people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in both municipal and private employment, housing, and public accommodations. The NCGA (which should be declared a hate group) put a moratorium on all non-discrimination ordinances to protect LGBT citizens through 2020, and then they can only be local, not state level. This is shameful. The first step in protecting all our citizens is protecting the ones the NCGA will not, and then pushing for statewide protections.
I’ll fight to keep the DMV from moving to Rocky Mount. We have a DMV office here that the state owns; our DMV staff lives here, and I don’t think it’s right to send our Raleigh citizens an hour east to work in stinky ol’ Rocky Mount to work in a private building for which the state will pay over $2 million annually in rent. There’s something rotten with this deal and I intend to get to the bottom of it. If anyone thinks the DMV’s 400 employees will somehow raise the culture level of Nash County, you’ve never been to Nash County. Or the DMV.
I have a 7-year comprehensive plan on removing these public nuisances. My proposal involves creating detours around all of them, then slowly replacing them, one at a time, with standard intersections using stop lights to control the flow of traffic. Let’s go back to driving like civilized people.[1] |
” |
| —George Knott’s campaign website (2019)[2] | ||
See also
2019 Elections
External links
- Search Google News for this topic
- City of Raleigh
- City council website
- Campaign website
- Campaign Facebook page
- Campaign Instagram page
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ George Knott’s campaign website, “Home,” accessed August 25, 2019
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