Mayorial Candidate’s Nancy McFarlane, Billie Redmond, Randall Williams Interviews on VoterRadio

Capitol Coffee is a show from the NC Center for Voter Education.  Over the last three weeks, the host Brian Warner has interviewed the three Mayoral candidates, Dr Randall Williams, Nancy McFarlane and Billie Redmond.  For the most part the candidates avoid getting contentious and are offer similar views across the board.  The three candidates are all successful business people and a commitment to small business is obvious in all of their pitches.  Infastructure, schools, water supply and transit were topics that revealed the small differences between each candidate.

Williams, who is running as a Republican surprisingly offered that Dorothea Dix should be preserved entirely as a park and continuously came back to  redevelopment as the priority over new development.  Williams also said that in current economic conditions he did not support any government arts funding. Williams offering the most laissez faire attitude, often referring to regionalism as the soltuion to many of our problems.

McFarlane, an independent who has served on the city council for 4 years was most familiar with specific development and growth issues.  Stressing the importance for improved regional transit, McFarlane commited to making light rail. Both McFarlane and Redmond often reffered to institutions within the city but outside of city control as important to the city.

Redmond stresses jobs, but really all candidates do in these interviews.  Redmond actually underscored the need for private investment downtown most heavily.  Interestingly when asked about public safety Redmond, who was interviewed Monday after hurricane Irene, said that our emergency response was subpar and without mentioning the Lightner Center, said we very much need a new 911 response headquarters.

Water is considered the critical limiting factor to Raleigh growth and McFarlane talked about how both pollution and supply expansion were critical topics.    Redmond didn't dive deep on the topic of water supply saying that expanding water resources was unnecessary as the city had over 300 days of water supply right now.  Williams talked about water as a regional issue and said the city had done a good job handling expanding water needs. Williams didn't offer specific solutions but said that it was a regional issue and would require a regional discussion.

Some of the most revealing answers came in the form of the non political questions: McFarlane and Randall agreed that Lincoln was their favorite president while Redmond chose Reagan.

Listen to the interviews here.

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Nancy McFarlane Billie Redmond Elections 2011 Randall Williams

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