Charlotte City Council member Dimple Ajmera is running for NC treasurer
Democrat Dimple Ajmera, who was just re-elected to the Charlotte City Council, filed for state treasurer on Thursday.
Ajmera, Charlotte’s youngest council member at 33, was re-elected to her second at-large term last month.
She became the third Democratic candidate in the race, along with Matt Leatherman and Ronnie Chatterji, both of Raleigh.
Republican incumbent Dale Folwell is running for a second term.
The treasurer oversees the retirement system for state and local government employees as well as a health care plan that serves more than 720,000 people in North Carolina — including close to 39,000 in Mecklenburg County and more than 93,000 in Wake County.
Ajmera, a CPA, said one reason she’s running is to restore “respect” to public employees. The city and Folwell were recently at odds over Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney’s attempt to retire at the end of the year and then return temporarily to his current job two months later. He has since decided to postpone retirement.
“It goes back to restoring respect to our teachers and police and all public employees,” Ajmera said in an interview Thursday morning. “I see a lack of respect.”
She also said she would work more closely with hospitals on health care costs and push for Medicaid expansion.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, she arrived in America at 16 speaking no English. She went on to the University of Southern California. First appointed to council in 2017, she was the city’s first Asian American official
This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 10:12 AM.
