🇺🇸 Election Notes: Westside challenger quits, eastside candidates debate
City Council primary election approaching: Sept. 9
The following article appeared in the August 13, 2025, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
🇺🇸 Election notes: A Tiawana Brown challenger drops out and endorses her; Eastside forum gets a little testy
Now through the city of Charlotte primary election, Sept. 9, The Ledger will round up tidbits of election news to help you make an informed choice. For impartial election information that’s free to all, look for our Election Hub, coming later this month, with all the information you need to cast an informed vote.
◼️ Surprise endorsement could aid council member under indictment: One of the races to watch on election night next month will be the contest for City Council District 3, the west Charlotte seat held by Democrat Tiawana Brown — who was charged with felony fraud in May. Her path to re-election might have gotten a little easier this week, with one of her three opponents dropping out and endorsing her Tuesday.
Word had started spreading in political circles Monday night that the Black Political Caucus endorsements were in — and that challenger Joi Mayo had edged out Brown by one vote. That would leave challenger Montravias King with a tough road to victory. Brown opponents had hoped that King would suspend his campaign and endorse Mayo. At the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, King surprised some in the audience by ending his campaign — and endorsing Brown instead.
“A lot of voters in District 3 still love and admire Councilwoman Brown,” King said after the forum, according to WFAE. “They have an emotional connection to her. I’m not going to go over that.”
◼️ Eastside debate gets spicy: Another race to watch is the election for City Council District 5 on Charlotte’s eastside, where incumbent Marjorie Molina is facing a challenge from fellow Democrat J.D. Mazuera Arias. At a candidate forum last week sponsored by community group CharlotteEast, the two exchanged some testy words.
Arias criticized Molina for taking money from real estate developers and suggested “private lobbyists” had “scared the spooks” out of council members who wanted to look into using tourism money for needs other than the $650M in upgrades to the Carolina Panthers’ stadium. Molina replied that “it’s dangerous when someone says things that simply aren’t true” and said that “no one beat us up or threatened us to tell us what to do or what not to do.”
A candidate forum last week on the eastside featured incumbent Democrat Marjorie Molina and challenger J.D. Mazuera Arias.
He also knocked her for not replying to constituents’ emails, which she said was false, and said he disagreed with her support of the transit plan, which he said is “a good plan for Charlotte. It’s a bad plan for District 5.” He said it is a “regressive sales tax” that will increase the prepared foods tax from 7.25% to 8.25%: “That’s your delivery, your take-out, things that people rely on.”
Molina touted her work getting the Eastland Mall redevelopment off the ground and securing more than $90M for two road widenings in the district, and she said she had built strong connections within the city to get things done for the eastside. “We need the same steady hand to continue that work so we can continue that progress together,” she said.
Immigrant bona fides: They also expressed their solidarity with immigrants, with Arias telling the crowd that he was “formerly undocumented” and Molina proclaiming, “I married an undocumented immigrant 20 years ago, and my children are first-generation American.”
Despite butting heads, they each replied graciously to the final question of the night, in which they were asked to say something nice about one another. Molina said Arias is “absolutely tenacious” and “on fire,” and Arias said Molina is “a force to be reckoned with” and that “She’s smart. … She’s intelligent. She’s dedicated. … I think you’re wonderful. I really do. But we just have different ideas about policy and representative leadership.”
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