‘Not going to stop.’ Vilma Leake faces toughest challenge yet in bid for 10th term
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- Vilma Leake seeks a tenth term after 18 years on the county commission.
- She has strong ties in District 2 and in the faith community.
- Leake is facing Monifa Drayton in the Democratic primary.
No business is ever truly finished for Vilma Leake, an 18-year incumbent on the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners.
That’s why Leake, now in her 90s, is running for a tenth term on the commission. The ever-present, fiery and sometimes controversial commissioner has become all but synonymous with her District 2 community in west Charlotte.
Local politicos say she faces her steepest competition since her first run nearly two decades ago. Monifa Drayton, a political strategist who was once the top staffer at the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party, is taking her on in the primary and has already snagged weighty endorsements.
Drayton says it’s time for Leake to “pass the baton” because holding the same seat for a long time can stifle innovation.
But Leake is not ready to call it quits yet.
“What would I do all day but deteriorate? As long as God gives me breath and strength and (the ability) to move, I’m going to do it,” Leake said. “My life has been serving, and I’m not going to stop.”
Who is Vilma Leake, Mecklenburg County commissioner?
Leake landed in Charlotte in 1964 on account of her husband, a bishop with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. His ministry shuffled them around to different cities every couple years.
Dan McCorkle, a Democratic strategist, attributes much of her electoral longevity to her presence in the faith community and the “church ladies” who identified with her.
“There was always a saying that to beat Vilma Leake, it’d take a woman of similar age and of similar name recognition. That has not really ever happened,” McCorkle said. “A man can’t beat Vilma.”
Leake credits her faith community with more than simply getting her elected. It also got her through tragedies, including the deaths of her husband and son.
“I cannot live without my faith,” Leake said.
She found her second community through education, which brought even wider name recognition.
Leake served as a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board member for 11 years beginning in 1997.
Before that, she was a teacher at Independence High School and leader of the North Carolina Association of Educators. She organized 46 buses of Charlotte teachers to go to Raleigh in 1989 and advocate for better wages, which they secured.
Leake has continued to advocate for teachers and children on the county commission and was the reason CMS had authority to build an improved West Charlotte High School in 2022, said Pat Cotham, a former commissioner who served beside Leake for 12 years.
Her impact extended internationally too, Cotham said. Leake once organized an effort to send nine Black education leaders to Ghana to learn more about education in other countries, and a library in Nigeria is named after her because she led an initiative to send them books.
Her background in education taught her how to lobby and stay organized, two skills she said serve her well in office.
“When people come to me with a problem, I don’t wait two or three weeks to try to help them,” Leake said. “I get busy right away.”
Serving District 2
Leake grew up in Wilson, North Carolina, where her parents adopted an open door policy for their neighbors. The mail man used to stop by each day to chat politics over lunch.
She works in much the same fashion today.
Leake takes her first phone call around 5 a.m. some mornings and her last after midnight. Her cell phone stays on at all hours, just in case.
“It’s never a dull day,” she said. “If you care about what you do, you cannot take a vacation, and you cannot take a break.”
Leake’s time on the commission is defined by her constituent work, said Jane Whitley, the former chair of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party.
“She actually does listen, and she delivers for her district,” said Whitley, who credits Leake with attending every community meeting and funeral she can, even for strangers.
McCorkle called Leake’s leadership style “about as hands on as you can get.” She spends most of her time inside District 2 boundaries, which he said was “unique” to the veteran leader.
“She knows every square inch of that district,” McCorkle said.
Leake’s impact is felt in ways big and small across west Charlotte, Cotham said.
Leake spearheaded the push to name the new county services building on Wilkinson Boulevard after the late former commissioner Valerie Woodward. Several schools were named after prominent Black leaders at her urging, too, including Walter G. Byers Elementary School and Phillip O. Berry Academy.
Leake started a group to help Black entrepreneurs learn about small business, how to expand and how to apply for county contracts. Cotham recalled one meeting where more than 500 people attended.
And Leake always took time to chat with people who approached her on the street, often capping their discussions by giving them a box of snacks or a warm pair of gloves from the trunk of her car, Cotham said.
“Vilma is a force like no one else,” Cotham said. “She has the strongest work ethic, and no one serves her constituents as well as she does.”
‘She likes the dramatics’
Despite the warm reception in her district, temperature from the dais has been mixed.
Leake often pulls consent agenda items for discussion, which are typically noncontroversial items that would otherwise get approved in a single, swift motion. This can extend commission meetings and irritate her colleagues, Cotham said, but Leake considers it an act of transparency for her constituents.
Commissioners have addressed Leake in a “vulgar and dismissive tone” at times, which Cotham said makes her “angry, sad and sick to my stomach.”
Leake clashed with former conservative commissioner Bill James in 2009 when she voted to grant domestic partner benefits to county workers in same-sex relationships. James used a derogatory term to refer to her son, who died at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
And in 2024 Leake and then-Board Chairman George Dunlap infamously traded barbs as they compared each other to President Donald Trump.
Some controversies were of her own making.
In 2022 a state attorney sent her a letter asking her to stop calling a judge to discuss a sensitive juvenile court case involving her constituent. That same year, she said parents should “take out a warrant and have every educator arrested” after an unsatisfactory student achievement update from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
“Vilma’s like that. She likes the dramatics. She likes the loud,” McCorkle said. “Vilma, I think, relishes in the confrontation of debate.”
To Leake, it’s just a matter of being direct, which she said can be misinterpreted.
“A lot of people tell me, ‘She’s mean sometimes, the way she talks.’ I’m not mean, I’m just spelling out what needs to take place,” Leake said. “I’m outspoken, and I can’t be quiet. If I see something wrong, I’m going to say it and try to change it.”
Even at 91, McCorkle and Whitley consider Leake as sharp, loud and determined as ever, they said.
And as Drayton, her opponent, frames the election ahead as a time for change, Leake said there’s no need to change what’s working just fine.
“My question is, am I effective? Am I getting the job done? Nobody has ever said to me, ‘You need to go,’” Leake said. “My mind is good. My love for the people is still there.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
