EDITORIAL: The issues according to TCB

Early voting for the 2022 Primary Election starts next week. Perhaps you’ve noticed we’ve been escalating the election coverage from our newsroom, which will culminate in a Primary Guide that hits the streets — and the internet — next week. In it you’ll find coverage of every primary in Guilford and Forsyth counties, except the judicial races because we don’t have the bandwidth for the research required. We’ll also have an explainer on any bond issues you might find on your ballot.

We don’t do endorsements at Triad City Beat. Not because we don’t have opinions — we have lots of those — but because we feel it best serves our readership, which we know is smart enough to make up their own minds about candidates and varied enough that we can’t presume they’re in agreement with us about everything. Probably 10 percent of our audience is there because they hate us, and they read every single thing we publish.

And as we’ve mentioned, our opinions desk is conflicted out of writing about any candidate in any race.

But we’re asking a lot of questions of the candidates based on what we think is important, which we should talk about before the guide comes out.

We’re a local news source, one of very few in our market. As such we are vested in local issues, the most pertinent of which right now may be housing. While the Triad is still one of the most affordable metropolitan areas in the country, rents and home values are rising rapidly and we’re low on inventory just as gentrification in our downtown districts is pushing out folks on the lower half of the socioeconomic spectrum, most of whom are Black and Brown.

We’re interested in police reform — as local as it gets — because people are dying in our jails, and there was nothing in the initial report on the death of Marcus Deon Smith to indicate he had been hogtied, which was the cause of death.

We’re looking at income inequality in our cities and suburbs, government efficiency at the county and city level, new urbanism and public transportation. And we’re concerned that people who don’t seem to believe in public education want to take over our public schools.

We’re also asking candidates where they were on Jan. 6, 2020 and if they believe there was fraud in the 2020 election. That’s important because, even on the local level, traitors cannot run for office.