“I don’t see my role as mayor as having all the answers. I see it as an opportunity to raise questions and invite input – to really invite dialogue.”
– Mayor-elect Beth Kennett
As the first woman to be elected Burlington’s mayor, Beth Kennett has a lot of folks wondering what she has to say.
So, it speaks volumes that, as she takes her victory lap in the wake of this month’s election, Kennett seems more keen to listen than to hold forth in grand oratorial style.
“I don’t see my role as mayor as having all the answers,” the 61-year-old Monroe native insists as she leans across an old table in a recreational loft over her favorite book store. “I see it as an opportunity to raise questions and invite input – to really invite dialogue.”
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This eagerness to hear people out is one of Kennett’s defining characteristics, and it goes a long way to explain how this relative newcomer to municipal government managed to storm her way into the city’s top office in this year’s election.
And storm in she did – despite a formidable challenge from outgoing councilman Ronnie Wall, who had previously served as Burlington’s mayor until he retired undefeated in 2015.
Kennett had initially shown her political chops two years ago when she came within 172 votes of unseating the city’s incumbent mayor Jim Butler in what was her first bid for an elected office since an unspectacular school board campaign in 2008. This year, Kennett did even better, and she ultimately beat Wall by 605 votes in what was generally a rising tide for Democrats and others on the political left.
Although the office of Burlington’s mayor is, strictly speaking, a nonpartisan post, Kennett proudly proclaimed her Democratic affiliation as she campaigned for the mayor’s post alongside incoming councilman Ian Baltutis, a fellow Democrat who had himself served as Bur-lington’s mayor until 2021.
The coordination between Baltutis and Kennett – which, at times, also extended to would-be council member Donna Vanhook – isn’t exactly unprecedented in Burlington’s electoral history. In fact, Wall pulled off a similar feat four years ago when the then-Democrat launched a tandem campaign with the Republican Butler and Harold Owen, an unaffiliated councilmember who had once served as Burlington’s city manager. This year, the partisan tide ran in the other direction – to the detriment to Wall, who had since shed his Democratic garb for the cloak of an Independent.
Yet, the ebb and flow of partisan politics wasn’t the only thing that Kennett had working in her favor this year.
“Ian Baltutis and I worked really hard; between our campaigns we knocked on 7,000 doors. I was also very fortunate to have a campaign manager – my daughter, and she is a campaign manager [by profession]…Emma was really able to map out a field strategy. Two years ago, I did a lot of that myself, but having Emma doing it really expanded what I was able to do.”
– Mayor-elect Beth Kennett
“Ian Baltutis and I worked really hard; between our campaigns we knocked on 7,000 doors,” the mayor-elect recounts. “I was also very fortunate to have a campaign manager – my daughter, and she is a campaign manager [by profession]…Emma was really able to map out a field strategy. Two years ago, I did a lot of that myself, but having Emma doing it really expanded what I was able to do.”
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See interview with incoming city councilman Ian Baltutis, who formerly served as mayor: https://alamancenews.com/former-burlington-mayor-prepares-to-make-encore-appearance-as-councilman/
See interview with incoming city councilman Jeff Smythe, the city’s former police chief: https://alamancenews.com/burlingtons-former-police-chief-will-don-civilian-attire-for-next-assignment-city-councilman/
Kennett drew some additional support from the local Democratic Party, which actively campaigned for its members in this year’s nonpartisan municipal elections, as well as other left-of-center organizations like Down Home North Carolina. Another point in Kennett’s favor was the financial patronage of some D.C. area Democrats, who also backed Graham’s mayor-elect Chelsea Dickey and a third successful candidate for Wilson’s city council.
But perhaps more than anything, Kennett’s own conversations with voters allowed her to make an impression on the local electorate.
Through these face-to-face interactions, the city’s residents found out about the mayor-elect’s upbringing in South Carolina, her 31-year-long residency in Burlington, and her life-long love of the arts, which led her to obtain a degree in flute performance and music education from Gardner-Webb University. They were introduced to her husband Jay Kennett, the now retired pastor at Hills-borough United Church of Christ, as well as the couple’s two adult daughters Abi and Emma. They went on to learn that Kennett is an ordained pastor with a master’s in divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and that she currently serves as the director of congregational health for Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, the nationally-recognized medical center in Winston Salem.
In her day job with Atrium Health, Kennett is often dispatched on consulting assignments to address the concerns of church congregations. The mayor-elect acknowledges that these consulting gigs have made her a practiced listener – a skill that she has gone on to apply in her conversations with voters.
During the course of the campaign, Kennett heard a great deal about what’s ailing the city’s residents.
“One of the most common things we heard on the doors was concern about rising costs, lack of resources. There was concern about taxes going up and that there are not enough affordable activities for school-age kids, both after school and in the summer.”
– Mayor-elect Beth Kennett
“One of the most common things we heard on the doors was concern about rising costs, lack of resources,” she recalls. “There was concern about taxes going up and that there are not enough affordable activities for school-age kids, both after school and in the summer.”
Kennett has gleaned some additional insights about the public’s preoccupations from her service on Burlington’s traffic commission, which she joined shortly after her failed mayoral bid in 2023. The incoming mayor nevertheless concedes that her time on the traffic commission has left her with the sense that the city officials spend more time reacting to the concerns of residents than anticipating these problems so they can be addressed systematically.
Once she has command of the gavel, Kennett contends that she’d like to improve the city’s communication with residents.
“I would like to see people working together to come up with creative ideas. I’m not a fan of complaining just to be complaining. But if there is a problem, it would be nice to have someone address that.”
– Mayor-elect Beth Kennett
“I would like to see people working together to come up with creative ideas,” she goes on to explain. “I’m not a fan of complaining just to be complaining. But if there is a problem, it would be nice to have someone address that.”
Kennett admits that the city’s council chambers aren’t an appropriate venue for anything and everything that may be on the minds of residents. For those who want to air opinions that fall outside the council’s purview, she recommends the open mic sessions that she routinely hosts at Persnickety Books on East Davis Street – owned by her friend and newly-elected councilman Baltutis.
But when it comes to the business of municipal government, Kennett says that she intends to lend a willing ear to all comers and generally do her dead-level best to represent the people of Burlington.
“As the mayor of Burlington, I want to be the best me that I can be,” she asserts. “I want to bring my experience, my giftedness, and my compassion for people to that role. And I want to take people seriously.”
