"Chuck You" Candidate Takes on Political Convention, City Spending
Chuck Chapman acknowledges he is a political "neophyte," but says he has the skills and drive to be an effective Brevard Mayor.
BREVARD — Plenty of political candidates claim to be outsiders.
Then there’s Charles “Chuck” Chapman, who takes this approach to a whole new level.
“I’m an interloper,” he said.
Chapman, 60, one of four candidates running to replace outgoing longtime Mayor Jimmy Harris, has raised a total of $100 in donations — little enough that he was not required to file a campaign finance report, said Jeff Storey, Transylvania County’s elections director.
Chapman handprinted the T-shirt he wears featuring his campaign slogan: “The Chuck Stops Here.”
He broke up a shipping pallet to make a sign that literally staked out his position as an alternative choice, posting it at the end of a long line of placards touting Dee Dee Perkins’s candidacy for mayor.
“Or Chuck,” his since-removed sign said.
He has neither a campaign website nor a public email address, which is how he rolls both in politics and in life.
“I don’t have a cell phone. Or a computer,” he said. “Or a girlfriend. Or a kid. Or a car.”
Anyone who wants to reach him, he said, can head down North Broad Street to the Sunrise Cafe, his unofficial campaign headquarters. Look for the shortish, affable guy with a beard and lank, red-gray hair, settled in at an outdoor table.
“I’m here every day,” he said.
Living simply, he said, has not only provided him with a political niche, but a street-level view of the city’s needs.
Which in turn has informed his small-government platform. Though he registered as an unaffiliated voter shortly before the start of the July campaign filing period, “I’m conservative,” he said, and described himself as more politically aligned with the lone Republican in the nonpartisan race, Danny Hein, than with the two registered Democrats, Perkins and City Council member Maureen Copelof.
The city, Chapman said, is spending money on “pretty stuff” it doesn’t need while neglecting essentials.
“What’s happening right now is we have a child and their shoes need replacing. But, oh, now we’re going to have another child,” he said, comparing the city to irresponsible parents. “Forget about it. Stop!”
Specifically, he said, the city was wrong to fund recently completed or ongoing projects such as extensions to the multi-use Estatoe Trail, downtown’s Clemson Plaza, the Mary C. Jenkins Community Center and the Depot Railroad Avenue Park, which he called “the imitation train depot.”
It should instead spend money on controlling stormwater, which routinely floods streets and sometimes carries effluent from leaky sanitary sewer lines. Yes, he’s aware these lines are being refurbished, he said, but “not fast enough.”
Most of all, the city should tend to the crumbling and incomplete network of sidewalks he navigates between his apartment on Whitmire Street and his part-time job as fry cook at Jordan Street Cafe.
“I’m not going to rest until the sidewalk on Railroad (Avenue) is fixed,” he said.
Affordable housing has emerged as one of the biggest campaign issues this year, with several candidates for Brevard offices promising city-backed solutions to ease the shortage.
Chapman isn’t one of them. “The city should not be in the affordable housing business,” he said.
Not even, he is asked, by providing modest assistance, such as the waiver of utility connection fees recently awarded to a small affordable housing project?
“No,” he snapped, “Inappropriate.”
That’s because the problem of out-of-reach housing prices will be resolved when employers who can’t fill jobs are forced to raise wages. Workers will then have enough money for apartments and homes.
“The market will take care of itself,” he said.
Such opinions might seem contradictory coming from a candidate who acknowledges he can only afford his own apartment because his landlord is a friend.
In fact, he describes himself as a model, hard-working, “self-reliant” citizen, who was ambitious and successful as a young man and is now disciplined enough to live within his means.
Though an old hip injury left him with a noticeable limp, he has never drawn a federal disability check, he said. And unlike the young people who have been living an easy life on the enhanced benefits of the Covid-19 era, “I’ve never taken unemployment and I’ve never played a video game in my life, except for Pong,” he said, referring to 1970s arcade staple.
Chapman grew up in Mississippi and California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, according to Chapman — but not according to the school’s assistant registrar, Brian Venner.
“There is no match in the (UCLA) student record database for Charles Wilkes Chapman or Charles W. Chapman or Charles Chapman,” Venner wrote in an email, using variations of Chapman’s given name. Chapman did not respond to requests from NewsBeat to rebut this information, neither answering queries sent to his closely guarded email address nor returning messages left at the Sunrise and another of his regular spots, the Transylvania County Library.
He later worked as a food broker for Good Source Inc., now Good Source Solutions, he said, and then “started my own private label and it made me rich, which is why I could say ‘Chuck you’ to the whole system.”
At least part of that story is true, said Bob Salkin, who founded Good Source in 1989 to buy oversupplies of commodities and sell them, typically, to food banks and prisons.
Chapman worked at the company as a mid-level buyer for about four years shortly after its founding, said Salkin, who recalls Chapman more for his youthful, red-haired appearance than his performance.
“I would remember if he was a big problem, or I would remember him if he was a superstar,” said Salkin, from his home in La Jolla, Calif., “and he was neither.”
The only light he could shed on Chapman’s claimed educational qualifications was that they weren’t required for his job at Good Source.
“My take on him was, he was a smart, young guy,” Salkin said of Chapman. “I don’t know how motivated he was, but he was a bright kid.”
Motivated enough, Chapman said, to be an asset for Brevard, his expressed affection for which actually started to make him sound like a conventional candidate.
He remembered the city and Pisgah National Forest from a family vacation, which he called the “fondest memory of my life . . . I wore out three or four pairs of jean shorts on Sliding Rock.”
He gravitated here after the death of his mother 20 years ago, and as proof of his commitment to the town, he said he has regularly volunteered at the Bread of Life community kitchen and helped fix up a bus that “was the progenitor of the county’s current mass transit system.”
And, despite his contrarian stances, he said, he would be an effective mayor, the main requirement for which is a skill he has in abundance — social engagement.
“The mayor’s job is to schmooze the public and the City Council,” Chapman said, adding that he’s on good terms with his opponents and even borrowed a computer from and shared take-out Thai food with Copelof during a recent remote political forum.
“I respect all those cats,” Chapman said of the other candidates.
In other words, the ultimate outsider could easily work on the inside.
Plus, he said, referring to the job’s annual salary of $10,500, “I could use the ten-five.”
The Candidate:
Charles Wilkes “Chuck” Chapman, 60
Website: none
Education: bachelor’s degree in sociology, master’s in economics, University of California, Los Angeles (Unconfirmed)
Career: Food broker, Good Source, Inc., San Diego, Calif., cook, Jordan Street Cafe
Public Service: volunteer, Bread of Life community kitchen
Personal: “Several ex-wives”
Brevard Connection: Resident for 20 years.
The Job:
The City of Brevard mayor serves a four-year terms and receives an annual salary of $10,500.
Thank you
Very interesting, readable, and informative.