Christine Kushner and Mona Singh were the top vote-getters in the seven-way Democratic primary for two open at-large seats on the Wake County Board of Commissioners and will progress to the general election.
Kushner is a former Wake school board chair who lives in Raleigh, and Singh is a technology consultant who lives in Cary. They received 30% and 22% of the vote, respectively.
Kushner’s primary success continues the trend of Wake voters electing former school board members to the county commission (sitting commissioners Susan Evans and Tara Waters are both school board veterans). Singh is a less orthodox choice, a first-time candidate with a background in technology, business, and local political organizing.
Raleigh City Councilmember Jonathan Lambert-Melton placed third, earning 18% of the vote. Community activist Kimberly McGhee placed fourth with 10.96%, followed closely by former Morrisville Town Councilmember Steve Rao with 10.85%. Candidates Robert Mitchener and Marguerite Creel came in sixth and seventh.
Kushner represented Raleigh on the Wake County school board for 11 years, including two as board chair. She’s currently a member of the Wake County Health and Human Services Board, where she helps set county policy on everything from mental health services and immunizations to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC). Her professional background is in public health policy.
Between Kushner’s education and health policy expertise, she said she’s prepared to oversee Wake County’s $2.1 billion annual budget—a third of which goes to the public school system and another 15% of which covers human services.
“I am honored to have earned the trust and support of Democratic voters across each of Wake County’s twelve municipalities and everywhere in between,” Kushner said in a press release after the results were finalized. “I want to sincerely thank every candidate who put their name forward and ran a positive campaign on the issues. I look forward to working alongside them to ensure we elect two strong Democrats to the Wake County Commission in November.”
Singh has about 130 patents to her name from her contributions to smartphone technology and augmented reality. In her spare time, she volunteers with the Wake County Democratic Party (she is a former precinct chair), teaches English to refugees, and serves on the Town of Cary’s Information Services Advisory Board. Originally from Delhi, India, she told the INDY ahead of the election that her vantage point as an immigrant gives her a special appreciation for the democratic process. She has big ideas about using smart technology to make Wake County’s government run better and finding creative ways to tax the county’s wealthiest residents.
This was Singh’s first run for office, and her victory is a bit of an upset: She surpassed Lambert-Melton and Rao, two candidates with previous elected experience and plenty of name recognition, both in the vote total and in fundraising.
Per her most recent available campaign finance report, Singh raised about $133,000 this election, the most of any at-large commissioner candidate. Lambert-Melton raised about $131,000, Rao about $120,000, and Kushner just under $113,000. Creel raised about $8,500. McGhee and Mitchener do not have any finance reports on file on the state Board of Elections website.
Singh also collected dozens of local endorsements, including from the Wake chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators, NC Asian Americans Together, and most of the Cary Town Council.
Cary Town Councilmember at Large Carissa Kohn-Johnson said Singh helped her and many of her Town Council colleagues get elected over the past few cycles, and they did what they could to return the favor this year.
“Mona Singh is a power canvasser,” Kohn-Johnson wrote in a text to the INDY. “She turns out thousands of votes by hitting doors and having in-person conversations with voters. She knows what people think, feel, and want to see because she has spent years talking to them one-on-one.”
Lambert-Melton congratulated Kushner and Singh in a Facebook post Wednesday morning, writing that he fully supports them and is “focused on finishing the rest of my term on Raleigh City Council,” which expires in December, and “doing everything I can to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot this fall.”
Kushner and Singh will appear on the general election ballot along with Republicans Gary Dale Hartong and Kyle Stogoski, who did not have a primary. Wake voters reliably elect Democratic county commissioners, so the race is Kushner and Singh’s to lose.