Endorsement: James Festerman for Reidsville Mayor

Reidsville’s election is Tuesday, October 6th, so it’s time for the first endorsement of this election cycle.

We visit Reidsville, NC quite often and feel that it’s a growing city with a great attitude. While there is a lot of work to be done in certain areas of the city, the downtown area has became a destination for visitors and shoppers. The new Market Square is the centerpiece of the downtown area and has a lot of potential to host festivals and concerts. The winner of the mayoral election will have an important role in continuing the progress that has been made in the past few years.

There are three candidates running for mayor. James Festerman is the incumbent mayor running for re-election, Donald Gorham is the current mayor pro tem and is giving up his re-election bid for City Council to run for mayor and Chuck Faint is a relative newcomer to the race. Festerman is the former Reidsville police chief and served 2 terms on council before being elected to mayor. Gorham is a retired school administrator & current councilman and Faint is the owner of his real estate agency.

In a mayoral race like this, you have to ask “Is there a need for change?”. From what we have seen about Reidsville, the answer is a resounding “No”. James Festerman is doing a great job as mayor and he’s very approachable on the streets. For Donald Gorham, he never explained his side of the “October surprise” documents in which the city manager ordered the police department to not give him any more information because he was “meddling” and “micromanaging” the daily activities of the department. Although we have concerns on who leaked those documents to WGSR-TV, the documents are quite damning in regards to his activities of last year. As for Chuck Faint, we know very little about him and feel he doesn’t come close to the qualifications that Festerman & Gorham possess.

For the reasons stated above, SouthsideCentral endorses James Festerman for Mayor of Reidsville.