Back in the Game

When Robbie Perkins confirmed he would run for mayor last month, it was only a shock to those who haven’t been paying attention.

While Perkins has stayed out of elected politics since his 2013 loss to Mayor Nancy Vaughan, he’s never stayed far from the issues. In a series of interviews and public statements in the last year, he has increasingly stepped back in the spotlight.

Perkins stayed close to a traditional power center of Greensboro as Triad market president with the commercial real estate firm NAI Piedmont-Triad. He’s also slowly turned up the temperature in public criticisms of the current council, calling it slow to act, composed of too many community groups and non-profit veterans, and not enough hard-nosed business people.

“Mayor Vaughan has done a good job in many ways,” Perkins said. “Her style is a little different than mine. She’s more deliberate. I like to push things to go. Once we decide something needs to go, we don’t need to keep considering and talking about it. We need to do it.”

Though he’s been out of office for more than a decade, Perkins’ voice still carries weight. While the council is officially non-partisan, it has long been dominated by Democrats. As a Republican, Perkins served on the council for 16 years, including a two-year term as mayor from 2011 to 2013, before terms were expanded to four years. During that time, he faced criticism from Democrats who found him too conservative and pro-business, and Republicans who found him insufficiently conservative, throwing public dollars behind projects they believed should come from private developers.

He was known for an aggressive style on what could sometimes be a combative council, forming alliances where he could, but doing what it took to get to his goal.

“This isn’t a consensus form of government,” Perkins said in an interview with The Thread last week. “If—and it’s a big ‘if’—the mayor leads on something and they have four votes to go along with what they want to do, that’s the key thing. Five votes wins. I was always pretty good at putting together five votes.”

That political savvy and skill made him mayor, but his last few years in public life were rocky—both politically and personally.

In the conservative wave that followed the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, there was a rare—and brief—Republican majority on both the Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. Bill Knight, a strong conservative but a political neophyte, became mayor. That council faced in-fighting, public backlash to a more conservative direction, and significant challenges come election season. Perkins took the mayor’s seat from Knight after just one term.

Personally, Perkins was having less luck. After a two-year separation, he and his wife had an ugly public divorce. He was forced to deny being a “deadbeat dad” as he struggled to pay spousal and child support in a down real estate market, eventually declaring personal bankruptcy.

“Some outside factors got in the way,” he now says of his re-election bid.

In the end, it was too much to overcome. He lost to Vaughan, who beat him 53 percent to 36 percent in the 2013 election. While some predicted he would run again as soon as possible, Perkins instead took time to put his personal and professional houses in order. But he never stopped caring about the city, he said—and would occasionally reach out to council members on issues he found important.

Observing from outside the last few years, Perkins saw the rare mass local political shift The Thread wrote about last month—a 2025 council race that could see as many as six seats on the nine-seat council turn over. He knew it was time to get back in.

We caught up with Perkins last week to ask about his decision, its timing, and what he sees as priorities for Greensboro.

The following exchange has been edited for clarity and length.

The Thread: It’s been more than a decade since you last ran for office. Let’s start with the obvious question—why get back in now?

Perkins: When Nancy Vaughan said she wasn’t going to run again, it surprised me like it did everyone else. Greensboro is at an inflection point and needs a strong leader as mayor. We’re in a good position to move forward. I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t give it a shot.

A lot of names are in the conversation for mayor—former council member and mayoral candidate Justin Outling, council members Marikay Abuzuaiter, and Hugh Holston. But more than a year out, most of them are keeping it pretty close to the vest. Why declare now?

Being an elected official is so tough today—a lot of people don’t want to give up the time with their family or their businesses. But Greensboro needs leadership. We’ve got at least four people coming off the council, maybe more depending on who runs for mayor.

Greensboro is a great city. I think it can be better. And it matters who is on council. We touch people through our decisions, we touch their lives. That’s what local government is—it’s nuts and bolts and it takes leaders. My first act in trying to be a leader in this city is to come out and say I’m willing to run for mayor. My going early was intentional, to raise the profile of this election.

The city has seen a lot of growth since 2013. There are also a lot of challenges. What drew you back to office at this moment?

What we see happening now, we were working toward that and I was working toward it years ago in Greensboro. A lot of the work we did I’m proud of—getting the land under contract for the [Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts]. The growth we’ve seen in downtown. We have to keep that going but do it the right way.

Economic development is essential. So we’ve created all these new jobs. Where are people going to live? Affordable housing—I don’t think we’ve done a very good job with that at all. I’ve spent 45 years in real estate. We have some of the top developers in the country domiciled in Greensboro, North Carolina. We should be able to figure this out.

Yes, it does cost a lot. You may spend $8-$10 million for a 300-unit complex. But if you don’t do that now it’s going to cost $15-$20 million in ten years.

We’ve still got certain issues with crime in the community. We’re going to have to support our police and our firefighters. They’re out there on the front lines. I put my lobbying hat on and called council members to try to get them to raise police salaries. That’s important. And it’s working—we’re filling positions now, closing those gaps.

More development has been a double-edged sword for some in Greensboro. There are a lot of people who are being priced out right now and people experiencing homelessness. We’ve been covering the tension between development and efforts to help those people, including the Interactive Resource Center.

I attended a group meeting of property owners near the [Interactive Resource Center]. They’re in an impossible position. We need to provide services for people, but you can’t allow what’s happening now—what’s happening in Center City Park, the level of panhandling that is happening at any major intersection in this city. You can’t allow that, period. Leaving it like this will cause our downtown to fail.

I hope the homelessness issue is dealt with in an effective way well before the 2025 election. Right now we’re losing our downtown to it. People are moving out. People aren’t locating there.

We also need to step up our infrastructure spending. There’s going to have to be a capital plan for that and the council is going to have to get together and handle that.

The key things are going to be public safety, planning for affordable housing, and investing in our infrastructure. That’s what this campaign is going to be about. We’re 14 months out but so far, the support and the enthusiasm we’re getting already has been great.