Winston-Salem Residents Elect Mayor Allen Joines to Fourth Term

The mood was festive during a party for Democrat candidates at the Millennium Center in downtown Winston-Salem last night. The crowd anxiously awaited election returns for city council and the mayor's seat.

Democrat Allen Joines won a fourth consecutive term as mayor of Winston-Salem Tuesday night during the municipal general election. Joines easily defeated Republican James Lee Knox. Knox, ended his campaign for mayor in August, but his name was on the ballot because he didn't officially withdraw from the race through the Forsyth County Board of Elections.

Mayor Joines received more than 12,900 votes, or (85%). His Republican challenger, James Knox, received a little over 2,300 votes, or about 15 percent of the vote.

Joines says he's looking forward to building on the momentum created from recent economic growth in the downtown area. He says he also wants to focus on developing other parts of the city and  social issues.

“There are two things that I'm going to focus on. One is to continue to add jobs to our community. Our unemployment has stayed below the state average but we still want to get it down around five percent. Then I want to launch an initiative to try to address poverty in our community. We had a great success in our ten year plan to end chronic homelessness and I want to approach the issue of poverty in the same way by creating a Blue Ribbon Commission to study that,” says Joines.

Joines says his plan to help reduce poverty and homelessness in Winston-Salem includes building more affordable housing units within the city.