Asheville, North Carolina’s Mayor Terry Bellamy

When Terry Bellamy was elected mayor of Asheville, North Carolina, in November of 2005, local observers were far from surprised. 

She was a familiar face in city politics, a six-year veteran of city council who first ran for mayor in 2001. She had established a reputation as an analyst and advocate, a crusader for children’s issues and affordable housing, a woman skilled at building coalitions and understanding the intricacies of municipal government.

To the voters of Asheville, she seemed a natural choice. After an impressive primary showing, she was elected to office with 57 percent of the vote.

Bellamy’s election as mayor was also an historic one. First, she was a woman, only the second elected as mayor of Asheville. Second, she was young. At 33, she would become the youngest mayor in North Carolina and the youngest in Asheville’s history. Third, as Asheville’s 46th mayor she would be the city’s first African-American in that position. Upon inauguration, Bellamy would become one of only three black mayors in the nation running a city of more than 50,000 people, with a population less than 20 percent African-American. (Asheville’s population is about 70,000, with 17 percent African-American.)

Many of the voters who elected Bellamy had crossed racial lines, but the more Ashevillians knew of Terry Bellamy, the less they viewed her though the lenses of gender, age, and race. 

“I think it’s less that Asheville has elected a black mayor than Asheville has elected a mayor who happens to be black,” noted Bill Sabo, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. 

The early years

Nothing beats a can’t but a try.

It’s one of Terry Bellamy’s favorite aphorisms, and considering her backstory, it’s not hard to see why. Growing up, she had plenty of can’ts to choose from. Having been raised in Asheville’s public housing by a single mother working three jobs, it would have been easy enough for Bellamy (then Terry Whitmire) to suppress her dreams, to conclude her ambitions were misplaced. But her mom wouldn’t allow it. Bellamy’s mother worked third shift at a manufacturing plant. On top of that, she drove a daycare van, worked catering on the side, and, with Terry’s help, raised four children in Asheville’s Klondyke Homes development. In her spare time, she ministered to the homeless and volunteered in the prison system. If her eldest daughter Terry was going to learn about can’t, she was going to have to learn it somewhere else.

“She’s a woman of personal perseverance and tenacity,” Bellamy says of her mother. “She will work really hard, and she’ll do so with little recognition or fanfare.” 

Thanks to her mother’s self-sacrifice, Bellamy grew up without wanting. 

“I hung out with people from affluent homes, and what they had, we had,” Bellamy recalls. “We didn’t have the top name-brand of everything, but we were comfortable … It wasn’t until I got to college and started learning about incomes and what people made that I thought, ‘Man, I was poor.’ But I didn’t know it, because my mom did everything she could so we could have a good life.”

Indeed, Bellamy remembers her days at Asheville High School  as “wonderful.” She was popular in school, a cheerleader and homecoming queen who traveled the state as a member of the debate team. She describes herself as an average student — “I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the bunch” — but she took advantage of what opportunity came her way. 

“Terry was always an independent thinker,” recalls Bellamy’s former debate coach, Eula Shaw. “I admired that about her. Too often young people are influenced by their peers to make decisions that are contrary to their principles. Terry marched to her own beat.” 

For Shaw, the roots of Bellamy’s political approach — passionate but pragmatic — were born in debate class, where she learned to temper her emotions and challenge injustice through reasoned argument and civil discourse.

After graduating from Asheville High in 1990, Bellamy enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1995. She considered staying in Charlotte, but only briefly. 

“The day I graduated we packed up my mom’s car with all I had and we came on home,” Bellamy says. “I’ve been here ever since.”

Part of the solution

Initially, she had no plans to enter politics. After returning to her hometown, her first job was with the Hillcrest Enrichment Program, working with at-risk youth in one of Asheville’s public housing projects. The turf was familiar. As a child, Bellamy had been a majorette in the same program, traveling from her home in Klondyke to nearby Hillcrest to learn cheers and wow crowds as a three-year member of the Hillcrest High-Steppers. 

While still working at Hillcrest, she accepted a position at Mountain Housing Opportunities, a local nonprofit dedicated to expanding affordable housing in the Asheville area. Her work gave her first-hand insight into the two issues — housing and youth — that would become the cornerstone of her first run for City Council. 

“I’m not the type of person who stands around and complains,” Bellamy says. “I wanted to be a part of the solution.” 

She soon got her chance, getting elected to City Council in 1999 at the age of 27.

Bellamy proved a quick study, learning when to stand firm and when to budge, and became known for working with other council members while not abandoning her core beliefs. 

“She certainly did her homework and was always well prepared,” recalls Charles Worley, a fellow council member and former Asheville mayor. “She was always ready to speak up, voice an opinion, take a stand. A lot of times, somebody brand new gets kind of shy and retiring for a while, but she seemed to hit the ground running and was always an integral part of the discussion on council.” 

After two years on the council, Bellamy ran for mayor but failed to make it out of the primaries. Worley was elected instead and served from 2001-05.

Bellamy was re-elected to city council in 2003 before winning her second bid for mayor in 2005. Though Asheville has a strong Democratic constituency, Bellamy’s win was the result of bipartisan support. Asheville has more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans, and while local elections are nonpartisan by design, Bellamy was clearly a more liberal candidate than her opponent in the general election, the conservative councilman Joe Dunn. While Bellamy polled the strongest in districts with high African-American and Democratic turnout, post-election analysis of the vote revealed broad support across the city.

For local blacks, the election was a watershed moment in Asheville’s history. 

“I had older African-Americans, who knew my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who were in tears,” Bellamy recalls. “My grandmother cleaned houses. Each day she walked to work … To know that she was walking to clean houses, and now her granddaughter is sitting here, running the city … [it’s] amazing. Her friends, the people who knew her, will call. I still get letters.” 

Bellamy pulls a thick file of correspondence from her desk drawer. On difficult days, she says, the letters remind her of all those who are rooting for her to succeed.

While Bellamy understands her place in Asheville history, she wants to move out from under the labels — first this, youngest that — and be judged on her merits as mayor. Time and again she will respond to a question about her life with an answer about her policies, preferring the nitty-gritty of water bonds, wellness initiatives, and mass transit to the soft polish of self-congratulation.

“It’s not about me,” Bellamy insists. “I see a lot of elected officials, and it’s about them. And it’s not about me. My goal is not that Terry be in a better place at the end of my term, but that Asheville be in a better place. That we’ll be recognized for all that we have to offer, that the quality of life will be improved for people across the spectrum.” 

She ticks off a list of accomplishments, including increasing fire and police salaries, working to reduce homelessness, launching a “green government” initiative, repairing streets and sidewalks, and improving Asheville’s position through state and national lobbying. 

“I want to make sure that people know I’m not just sitting here with a title and a position,” she says. “I’m out working for all Ashevillians. That’s my goal.”

While the position of Asheville mayor is nominally a part-time (and poorly paid) position, 14-hour days are not unusual. In addition to her work as mayor, Bellamy works as an English professor at a local university — she declines to say where — and helps her husband Lamont with his executive car transport business. She still pitches in from time to time with her mother’s prison ministry, and she’s working towards her master’s degree in English from Western Carolina University. She’s also the mother of two small children: Seth, 5, and Imani, 3. 

During an interview with The Asheville Citizen-Times shortly after her election, Bellamy was asked how she planned to balance motherhood, career, and her job as mayor. After giving a measured response about her support system and her experience on city council, she turned the question on the interviewer: “And now I’ll say, ‘If I was a man, would I be asked this question?’” Reminded of that exchange, Bellamy still bristles: “Why is it that a woman has to be asked how she’s able to sustain, how she’s able to manage it all?”

Still, if you must know, Terry Bellamy has a one-word answer: Faith. 

It’s a word she keeps on her desk, printed neatly on a business card, to remind her of her rock. It’s her answer for how she was able to succeed and stay focused while those around her drifted off the path. It’s her answer for how she’s able to sustain, to manage it all, even when council issues get heated and her critics start to howl. 

“I try not to talk about my faith,” Bellamy says, “but I honestly believe that God’s been good to me. He has put people in my life who have opened doors for me, and who have been there for me. I am not perfect and I’ve made mistakes — God knows I’ve made mistakes  — but [I’m] so appreciative to live in an area where people will give me a chance, and have given me a chance. I thank God every day for this opportunity to serve this community.”

To faith, she adds family — her husband, her children, her grandparents, and godparents. Her mother, who turned can’ts into try’s and does so to this day, often shows up at city council to show her support. No matter how contentious the meetings get, Bellamy says, “I know there’s one person in the room supporting me, unconditionally. Not as mayor, necessarily. I know she’s there for Terry.”

So what’s next for Terry Bellamy? 

She intends to run for re-election in 2009 and hopes to gain another four-year term as Asheville’s mayor. 

“One more term, and that will be 14 years on council,” she says. “And after that, it’s time to move on.” 

What about a run for higher office?

“I’m not closing that door.”

“Nothing beats a can’t but a try,” Bellamy declares, “and for me, I’m going to try quite a bit. If I fail, at least I tried … I don’t want to be sick and on my deathbed saying, ‘I wish I had’ or ‘I should have’ or ‘I wish I would have.’ I don’t want to be like that.”

Quoting the Bible, she remembers the words of Paul:  “I fought the good fight.” 

“I want to be a good fighter,” Bellamy says. “He gave it all. I want to give it all. I don’t want to leave anything. I don’t want to be one of those people who goes to the grave with talents and ideas, and leaves them. I want to give all I have.”