Mary Black (North Carolina)
Mary Black was a member of the Raleigh City Council in North Carolina, representing District A. She assumed office on December 5, 2022. She left office on December 2, 2024.
Black ran for re-election to the Raleigh City Council to represent District A in North Carolina. She lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Black completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Mary Black earned a bachelor's degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 2016 and attended Vermont Law and Graduate School. Her career experience includes working as an organizer.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: City elections in Raleigh, North Carolina (2024)
General election
General election for Raleigh City Council District A
Mitchell Silver defeated Whitney Hill and incumbent Mary Black in the general election for Raleigh City Council District A on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Mitchell Silver (Nonpartisan)  | 40.0 | 17,900 |
 | Whitney Hill (Nonpartisan) | 33.0 | 14,746 | |
 | Mary Black (Nonpartisan) | 26.5 | 11,860 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.4 | 199 | ||
| Total votes: 44,705 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Black received the following endorsements.
2022
See also: City elections in Raleigh, North Carolina (2022)
General election
General election for Raleigh City Council District A
Mary Black defeated Catherine Lawson and Whitney Hill in the general election for Raleigh City Council District A on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Mary Black (Nonpartisan) | 39.2 | 13,181 |
 | Catherine Lawson (Nonpartisan) | 31.6 | 10,611 | |
| Whitney Hill (Nonpartisan) | 28.8 | 9,666 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.4 | 143 | ||
| Total votes: 33,601 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Mary Black completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Black's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- Affordable Housing & Homelessness: I’m the only renter on the council, offering a unique perspective shaped by personal experience of a renter's life. This drives my will to expand affordable housing, prevent displacement, and address homelessness with community-driven solutions. Through a multi-faceted approach, I will prioritize increasing access to market-rate units through flexible rent assistance, enabling rapid rehousing for those in need, enhancing landlord incentives to accept housing vouchers, focus on targeted permanent housing placements for unsheltered individuals and establish year-round low-barrier drop-in shelters, and offering housing location assistance will encourage participation in affordable housing programs.
- Workers' Rights and Safety: I will work to pass the Workers Bill of Rights, ensure better pay, benefits, and safety standards for all city employees. This includes supporting affordable housing programs specifically for workers, improving workplace protections, and establishing a community-led alternative response program for mental health issues. I will also to continue local labor unions including the public city workers' union. I propose instituting quarterly meetings between the City Manager's office and labor organizations would provide a regular, formal platform for discussing employee issues, addressing concerns, and negotiating improvements.
- Environmental Justice: Protecting our water, air, and land from pollution while advocating for sustainable, climate-resilient policies. Raleigh should strengthen its environmental protections through initiatives like expanding water quality buffer zones around waterways, implementing more aggressive stormwater management policies, and promoting environmentally responsible development practices. Investments in green infrastructure, such as permeable pavements and rain gardens, can reduce runoff, improve water quality, and make the city more resilient to flooding and extreme weather events. I also propose the creation of a city-wide environmental justice plan that includes the voices of low-income and Black and brown neighborhoods.
My work as a community organizer affords me the knowledge of working class community issues that are often unknown or ignored, particularly historically marginalized communities. My work as an environmentalist and community organizer provides me the outlook of viewing policy from an intersectional lens of an environmental, race, and class. This is often not a quality seen in elected officials. As an elected official I live as not a politician, but an advocate. This is shown in the relationships I have, maintain, and gain within the community and also in my votes on City Council.
My work as a storyteller provides me with the gift of telling the stories of people that often go unheard. My skills as a digital/content creator provides me with the platform to share others stories with a wider audience of people. It also helps to make politics and policies easier and more consumable for working class folks, who are often left out of the conversation, especially when it is too hard to access and understand.
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.
2022
Mary Black did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
|
Candidate Raleigh City Council District A |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 2, 2024
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Patrick Buffkin |
Raleigh City Council District A 2022-2024 |
Succeeded by Mitchell Silver |
| |||||||||
