Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines says he’ll seek a seventh term in 2024.
Joines, a Democrat, has been in office since 2001. He hasn’t been seriously challenged since, including the 2020 election, which he won with 71 percent of the vote.
He says he’s been mulling the decision on whether to run again for months.
“My granddad used to have a saying, you know, ‘Always leave before they want you to leave,’" Joines says. "But then I started getting calls, just unsolicited, by white leaders, African-American leaders, Hispanic leaders, saying ‘Mayor, we need for you to do it again to keep our city together.’”
Joines says his top priority will be reducing gun violence through programs that include counseling young people in violent hotspots.
He also wants to add thousands of units of affordable housing over the next eight years and reduce the city’s carbon emissions by 50 percent by the end of the decade.
Forsyth County Republican Chairman Ken Raymond declined to comment on Joines’ announcement, saying he’s focused on the local party’s county convention this weekend.