Durant Long is the only actively enrolled college student who has opted to take on the daunting task of running for local government. He is not your typical politician. In fact, he doesn’t aim to be. Instead, he sees himself as a concerned person. When he’s not on the campaign trail, Long stands out amongst his peers at North Carolina Central University, where he is obtaining an undergraduate degree in Spanish. A self-described “nerd,” Long expressed an interest in reading, particularly about policy, and a passion for dance and theatre.

Long, 22, is a lifelong Durham resident running as a nonpartisan candidate for the Ward 3 seat on the Durham City Council. Long brings experience in activism and long-standing ties to the community he has lived in, including experience working for the restaurant Sitar Indian Cuisine, a Durham small business, to a campaign built on shaking the council’s status quo. Long’s views on development and housing, combined with his passion for politics, establish him as a newcomer bringing fresh energy and political insight to the challenge of filling Durham’s Ward 3 seat.

Who, then, is Durant Long? 

An answer takes shape when looking at his “perfect day.” It begins with a run. 

“By far, one of my favorite things about [Durham] is the infinite amount of trails,” Long said.

Next, he visits one of Durham’s many coffee shops, with his favorites being Cocoa Cinnamon and Afrikikos Bistro.

These statements hold weight, considering Long’s time studying at UNC Asheville, which is located in a city lauded for its trails and cafes, before transferring to N.C. Central. Long’s stint in Asheville was defined by activism. He spent time teaching English and Spanish at Bounty & Soul, a non-profit that aims to address food insecurity and community health. He said that, in a perfect world, he would be a teacher.

However, what he gained most from Western North Carolina’s artistic stronghold was a renewed appreciation for Durham’s heritage and local businesses.

“Everybody in Asheville was very much as if you were all independent entities passing each other, but in Durham, you feel — and I hate to sound like a travel magazine — but there is a vibrance,” Long said. “There is a connection. There is a community.”

But despite that, he believes Durham’s progressive politics are failing to reach some residents. 

“The city council, they whine about not having power, saying there’s nothing they can do as an excuse,” Long said. “Right now, they’re giving what little power they do have away.”

Long discussed his vision for an updated Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), the building codes that regulate development. He said he firmly believes in strengthening the city’s building codes, especially regarding environmental protections and eliminating loopholes that developers use to work around stricter requirements.  

Durham resident Mary Molina also wants stricter regulations for development and sees this rewrite as critical.

“We are limited by our UDO, but we have to follow our UDO and not suspend it for this developer or that developer,” Molina said, adding that those suspensions are something that happens.

She said she wants the council to prioritize cases of affordable housing and infrastructure first. Long expressed that affordable housing may not be a priority for developers in the new UDO. He grew visibly frustrated as he spoke passionately about the ills facing Durham and his qualms with the current direction the UDO is going in. 

“In this new UDO, this is really dastardly, so many areas of Durham are being upzoned, so now, the developers, if they want to build their 20-story building, won’t even have to come to city council and proffer anything,” Long said. 

This anger at a faux-progressive Durham was the fuel that blazed a path for him to the campaign trail.

Long also said he hopes to prioritize affordable housing in his approach to development through investing in land trusts and creating pathways to home ownership. 

He said he sees public safety as a public health issue, one that can be contained through an expansion of alternative services such as Durham’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team program, or H.E.A.R.T.

Unique to his campaign, however, is the key issue he identifies as being at the heart of other issues—including development, which he said is his foremost complaint: redistricting. According to Long, Durham’s ward system is not properly representative of its population. 

The current system has three ward seats and three at-large seats, which are voted on by the city as a whole. Long said that due to voter disenfranchisement, Durham’s representation is not a true reflection of voters’ demands. Long said that various social pressures, such as taxes, work, and childcare, meant that the people most equipped to vote were often wealthier white people. 

Long calls for scrapping the three at-large seats, implementing a true ward system, where officials would be directly elected by the district they represent, and expanding the council to more than seven seats.

“There’s a massive disconnect between the leadership, and that’s because they only have to cater to one specific group,” Long said. “The only way to fix that is to make them have to cater to the majority, and the only way to do that is by fixing these systems of representation.”

Long’s take on the ward system is part of a burgeoning sentiment in Durham amongst certain constituents that the council should be expanded. Jackie Wagstaff, who previously ran for a seat on the council, recalls when the council was comprised of 13 members, and believes it should go back to at least 9. 

“It makes no sense that if I’m running for a ward seat, I have to live in the defined area that they’ve mapped out, but everybody in Durham from Ward 1, 2, 3, whatever, can vote for or against me. That’s not fair,” Wagstaff said. She added that it is cheaper to run in a true ward system, too, as candidates have fewer constituents to appeal to and can meet with them in their neighborhoods and communities, rather than with more expensive marketing strategies such as signage. 

Some of his colleagues don’t see it that way, however. At a candidate forum on Sept. 12, Mark-Anthony Middleton, who is running for the Ward 1 seat, expressed hesitation at the adoption of a true ward system.

Middleton said that, in a traditional ward system, there will be no elected official who is thinking globally about the city. He expressed that some people fear this will create a risk of the council acting like a congress, and of members looking out solely for their own district’s interests.

“If we start to act like a legislature where each person is vested in a particular neighborhood without a chief executive that exercises veto power, if there’s no elected official who’s thinking globally about the city, some have posited that we would act like a Congress where everybody’s kind of looking out for their district,” Middleton said. 

Middleton stated that he was open to the idea but would have to look more into it.

Also in the running for Ward 3 is Incumbent Chelsea Cook. Cook said the campaign trail has been “grueling,” and that Long’s candidacy, alongside other newcomers in the race, reflects the importance of knowing what decisions the council makes and its impact on Durham residents, while also highlighting the difficulty of achieving this goal due to barriers and restrictions to entering the race. 

While they may be running for the same seat, the two share a positive working relationship. Cook said that despite entering the race with fewer connections in the community as a result of this being Long’s first campaign, he has quickly “endeared himself to people” by speaking “truth to power,” Cook said. 

Undeterred by an early start to his political career, Long believes his knowledge of the political process and positive relationship with current Durham City Council members will help him ensure that people’s voices are heard.

“The problem is not one of experience; it is one of integrity. America voted for the most inexperienced person for president, right? I do not want to hear about inexperience,” Long said.

His claim is bolstered by a thorough understanding of the political process specific to the Durham City Council and an ability to admit when he is unsure of the answer to a question. Long takes a moment to gather his thoughts at forums. Once he does, his answers are often augmented by the passion in his voice. 

“I show up to the meetings, I do my research, I read through the hundred-page reports and PDFs,” Long said. “I think that is a surplus of experience. Moreover, I have the experience of being in the community.”

Molina said she wants a candidate who isn’t condescending and who won’t, as she puts it, “piss on my leg, and tell me it’s raining.” She said the result would be a more participatory citizenship.

A participatory citizen herself, Molina frequently attends candidate forums and has kept an eye on the candidates throughout the election. She has seen Long grow immensely, she said, from being “very green to much more seasoned and able to put his thoughts into words, put his thoughts into actions, deal with the audience and deal with his colleagues.”

Wagstaff sees a fresh, new face in politics taking shape. She said she wants someone honest rather than someone who is polished, and she sees that in Long: someone who speaks truth to power. Molina said that he is someone who clearly displays strong character. With these traits in hand, the two see Long as a candidate with strong ideas in his political future.

“I think, in a couple of years, he’ll be another force,” Molina said.

Primary elections for the Council will take place Oct. 7, and election day is Nov. 4. Early voting has begun and will run until Oct. 4.