When Mike Perdue was tapped as the Republican candidate for the at-large seat on the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, it wasn’t something he was expecting.
“I was surprised when one of the [GOP] board members called and asked if I would be interested in running if Tony [Jacobelli] were to drop out of the race,” Perdue said.
Jacobelli, who had run uncontested in the GOP primary, announced in late August that he was dropping out of the race due to a lack of availability. The executive committee of the county Republican Party got to choose his replacement—but they didn’t have long to do so.
Local GOP leadership asked Perdue to speak at one of their community meetings on the issue of property taxes. Less than two weeks later, Perdue was announcing his campaign at a launch party at ONETHIRTEEN Brewhouse and Rooftop Bar downtown.
“I’m not running a campaign where we talk about Republicans, Democrats, or Independents,” Perdue said at the event. “We’re not going to talk about whites or Blacks. We’re not going to talk about male or female. We’re going to talk about my campaign. We’re going to stay focused and talk about if you vote for Mike Perdue, this is what Mike’s going to do for you.”
Democrat Kay Cashion has held the board’s at-large seat since 2004. Last year, she announced her retirement, prompting a race to fill the open seat. Perdue faces Democrat Greg Drumwright this fall.
Perdue, a political newcomer, has lived in Guilford County his whole life, he said. For decades, he worked for the city of Greensboro as the director of maintenance and production of the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. When the city contracted the coliseum’s management to an outside firm a few years ago, Perdue retired from the city and continued to work at the complex, this time as the director of facilities.
With just a few weeks before the start of early voting, Perdue said the campaign had to come together quickly. That led to a few false starts for the campaign, including the creation of some AI images showing Perdue campaigning across the city with various demographics he had yet to meet in situations that never occurred. The images have since been removed from Perdue’s campaign website.
Though a Republican hasn’t held the at-large seat on county commission for almost three decades, Perdue said his platform of lowering property taxes and cutting “nonessential” expenses out of the county budget is a message all voters can understand.
“I’m running for the people who can’t afford what the current county commissioners are doing,” Perdue said.
Building An Image
Perdue’s abrupt leap into campaigning has hit a few rough spots.
An early iteration of his campaign website included a photo of him campaigning and talking to various groups of potential voters across the city. One was a picture of Perdue talking with three Black students who wore sweatshirts from Bennett College, UNCG, and NC A&T State University. Perdue was shown wearing a Guilford Technical Community College sweatshirt. Another showed Perdue talking to an Asian police officer.
None of the photos were real. They’d all been generated by AI.
When asked about the images, Perdue said he hadn’t approved any of them and had asked his website’s creator to take them down.
“It’s not an image that I support,” Perdue said of the picture of him speaking to the college students. “When it was brought to my attention, I asked for her to remove any images that were not a real picture.”
Carla Franklin, a former city council candidate and the website’s creator, said she was trying to get across her “vision for Greensboro.”
Because the campaign had to launch in a matter of weeks, Franklin, who has years of experience in the web development field, said she and Perdue didn’t get a chance to talk through some of the finer details for the website.
“I didn’t know Mike,” she said. “We should have sat down together to go through it before it went live.”
As a Black woman and a child of immigrants, Franklin said she wanted to show the diversity of Guilford County in the images. An AI-image disclaimer is posted at the bottom of the website, she said.
While the images were taken down, Franklin said she believes they reflect the kind of campaign Perdue is building.
“I know Mike works with everybody,” Franklin said. “He does major construction oversight. He’s constantly working with the [Minority and Women’s Owned Business Enterprise office, now called the Small Business and Entrepreneurship departmen]t. He’s giving work to Black and Hispanic contractors.”
Tricky Topics
Perdue also emphasized his facilities background when responding to questions about two other subjects that have proven controversial both locally and nationally in the past few months—data centers and detention centers.
“I think data centers, they’re going to come,” he said. “They’re obviously a necessity. We gotta look at the right location to put them and look at where they use a closed-loop water system.”
For him, it’s about making sure the facilities are energy efficient.
“I think everybody realizes that with all of the technology, data centers are going to be an essential part of business,” he said.
On the question of detention centers, Perdue deferred to other departments.
“I would leave that up to the sheriff’s department to advise the county,” he said. “He’s got the jail. If it needs additional space, you’ve gotta leave it up to the experts. I don’t have the expertise on that. I don’t know what the need is.”
As a supporter of law enforcement, he said he believes the sheriff’s department should work closely with the city’s police department for backup in the event of shootings, which have seen a deadly uptick in Greensboro over the summer.
The issue about which Perdue is most passionate is the one that brought him into politics: county taxes.
Line By Line
Earlier this year, when the county conducted property revaluations a year earlier than expected, many owners found themselves facing massive increases ranging from 30 to even 120%. The N.C. General Assembly responded with a one-year moratorium on property revaluations for 12 counties, including Guilford.
About a month before the commissioners passed the budget, Perdue spoke passionately at a county commission meeting against any tax rate increases.
“Your very constituents are the ones you’re hurting the most by these higher numbers,” Perdue said during the May 21 meeting.
In the end, the county commissioners voted to raise the county’s property tax rate by 5.9 cents to 78.95 cents due to the deficit caused by the moratorium.
But next year, once the moratorium has ended, Perdue said, property taxes could shoot up 40-45% under the new valuations. Given the predicted increase, Perdue said he would push for a revenue-neutral tax rate for next year, as opposed to an increase.
“We cannot stand for that,” Perdue said. “You want someone in that seat that’s going to stand there and fight for you.”
As the owner of several properties in Guilford County himself, Perdue said he saw how quickly the increases could impact residents.
“I saw the valuations of my own properties shot way up,” Perdue said.
According to property records, Perdue owns three properties within the county: his personal residence, a commercial building, and an Airbnb he rents out. In years past, Perdue said he owned several rental properties around Greensboro. If property taxes go up, so does the rent for those living in those properties, Perdue said.
“Property taxes has everything to do with what the rent of that house is going to be,” Perdue said. “The way I always look at it, whatever the expenses are in my house, whatever comes in has to go out in rent.”
As a landlord who rented out to lower-income residents through housing vouchers, Perdue said, any increases in rent will negatively impact those who are already financially vulnerable.
“When you raise the taxes, that could potentially be $50-75 a month,” Perdue said. “That doesn’t help to provide affordable housing.”
To that end, Perdue said he would use his experience working at the coliseum to cut out “nonessential business” from the budget.
“I believe taxpayer expenses should only pay for essential government business,” Perdue said. “Anything that is nonessential should not be paid by the taxpayers.
There is currently about $57 million in nonessential spending as part of the county’s budget, Perdue said. An email shared by Perdue from County Manager Victor Isler shows that what Perdue is referring to is what the county calls “strategic services,” which currently makes up about 7% of the budget or $59.3 million in expenditures.
A look at the adopted budget shows that strategic services include the cooperative extension, court services, library services, the Family Justice Center, soil and water, animal services, veteran services, and parks and recreation.
“What I’m saying is that is there a better way to drive those revenues,” Perdue asked. “Property taxes is one way.”
About 67% of the county’s revenue comes from property taxes. Twelve percent comes from sales tax and 10% comes from federal and state funds.
Perdue isn’t in favor of cutting taxes at the expense of essential services like schools, jails, or law enforcement, he said. Instead, he wants to reevaluate how the county is allocating funds to local nonprofits.
“I have no problem with nonprofits,” Perdue said. “What I’m saying is that these nonprofits don’t need to be going to the county for money. They need to go out and raise their own money. When people believe in that nonprofit, people will donate to it.”
He wants to go “line item by line item” to see if the funds fall under essential business, he said.
Among those nonprofits that the county funds is the Family Justice Center, which helps victims of trauma and domestic abuse to residents across the county. Another is Guilford County Solution to the Opioid Problem, or GCSTOP, a partnership between the county and a local nonprofit, which helps address opioid overdoses and deaths. In the courthouse, many non-mandated services help inmates complete court records and access rehabilitation services.
Still, Perdue said, he believes there’s probably room for things to be cut.
“I’m not saying you’ve got to cut them all out,” he said. “We have to figure out which ones should be cut out.”
As the uncle to a school teacher, Perdue is even in favor of creating new initiatives like a grant program in which teachers can apply for funds for their classrooms at the start of every school year.
“I think teachers are a professional trade,” he said. “I think they should be paid a competitive wage based on where they live. Number two, we’ve got to maintain the facilities of our schools.”
As a facilities director and licensed electrical contractor, this is where his expertise could come in, Perdue said.
“I deal with deep dives into construction,” he said. “I’ve been the manager of projects from the aquatic center to the amphitheater to the Tanger Center. I managed all those facilities … I would offer recommendations like major renovations of equipment, LED lighting, energy-efficient chillers and boilers,” he said.
Why Him?
Perdue doesn’t have much to say about his Democratic opponent, Rev. Greg Drumwright, who he says he doesn’t know.
Perdue says he’s distinguishing himself through his hands-on experiences with finances and management.
“Whether you want it to be or not, the county is a business,” Perdue said. “And you need people in office who understand business. You need people who know how to manage people.”
In his first run for office, he said he’s running a campaign for all of the people of Guilford County.
“I’m not running for this office for Mike Perdue,” he said. “I’m not doing it for the job or the money. I’m doing it for the citizens whether they’re Democrat or Republican, male or female, Black or white. I’m fighting for all of them.”
In-person early voting runs Oct. 15-31. Election Day is Nov. 3.
