On Nov. 2, 2021, the city of Spartanburg held elections for Spartanburg city mayor and city council seats four, five, and six. Former City Attorney Cathay McCabe and City Councilman Jerome Rice were the two candidates competing for the city’s mayoral election, with Rice ultimately proving victorious.
For the City Council seats, the fourth seat race saw incumbent Jamie Fulmer face off against challenger “CeeJ” Jefferson. The fifth seat pitted four candidates: Sevi Alvarez, Terrance Hawes, Chance Lebron and Janie C. Salley. Erica Brown ran uncontested for the sixth seat.
None of the candidates for these races had any party affiliation.
Jerome Fuller won another term in City Council seat 4 with approximately 83% of the vote. Janie Salley avoided a run-off election and won the city’s fifth seat with a total of approximately 51% of the vote. Erica Brown won the sixth seat with approximately 97% of the vote, the remaining votes being write-ins.
The Mayoral race saw Councilman Rice win with ~55% of the vote compared to Cathay McCabe’s 45%.
Jerome Rice is the first new mayor of the city in over a decade, as Junie White held the position since 2010. A new mayor can mean a shift in policy or direction for a city, so what exactly are Mayor Rice’s goals for Spartanburg?
In an interview with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Rice explained his goals in the areas of economic development and equity, employment, housing and homelessness, public safety and the process of public participation.
Concerning economic development and equity, Rice stressed the need to work with developers to ensure there is affordable housing in new projects. He also stressed the need for the city to assist in creating more minority-owned businesses in the downtown and Westgate Mall areas and help those that are already open in those areas.
Rice seeks to work with local colleges and universities in hopes of being able to fill future white-collar positions that the city is seeking to increase.
He also expanded upon how he hopes to help blue-collar employment recover from the pandemic: “We need to have conversations with businesses…and see what kinds of support they might need to hire more workers.”
Beyond this, Rice hopes that planned improvement in public transportation will help increase local employment, especially in blue-collar fields.
Rice re-emphasized the need for new affordable housing in the area. On homelessness, he claimed that, beyond problems with housing and local housing programs, the city also needs to build spaces to help combat mental health and addiction issues.
On the issue of public safety, Rice discussed the need for more police officers to fix the currently slow response times and to help ensure “that we have more officers on foot in certain areas. So it shouldn’t take long for them to respond to a call.”
Finally, on the public participation process, Rice discussed how essential it is to spread awareness for community meetings and surveys beyond just the community centers.
By spreading awareness of community meetings through door-knocking and distribution of flyers in neighborhoods and apartments, Rice aspires to make as many citizens as possible informed and participatory in their local decision-making process.
