Republican Tariq Bokhari, the self-styled tech bro with a history of using his public office to further his own private interests, narrowly won reelection to Charlotte City Council in last week’s municipal elections.
In a rematch against Democrat Stephanie Hand for the District 6 seat on Council, Bokhari won by a 51%-49% margin. (Bokhari beat Hand by the same spread in the COVID-postponed July 2022 city elections. In the 2022 race, 357 votes separated the candidates. This year it was 352 votes, excluding provisional and absentee ballots. Turnout was about 12% in 2022 and around 15% this year. Our democracy limps along.)
Bokhari’s victory is unfortunate in the way any Republican’s victory is regrettable these days. The party, as an institution, stands for sedition, authoritarianism, and illiberalism, personified, of course, in its standard bearer, Donald Trump, who has overtaken the GOP and transformed it into a cult of personality, one committed in 2016 to little more than his ego and in 2024 to his thirst for vengeance. In our present politics, the victory of virtually any Republican, no matter their individual merits, legitimizes a party that undermines the fundamental principles of our government while seeking to usher in an era of strongman rule.
But Bokhari’s flaws aren’t limited to his party affiliation; he has a history of personal ethical lapses, too. Specifically, while running Carolina Fintech Hub (CFH), a non-profit organization he previously described as a “mini chamber of commerce” for the fintech industry, Bokhari has campaigned for the industry’s expansion from his seat on Council, merging the discharge of his public duties with financially self-interested lobbying.
According to publicly available tax filings, this arrangement has been a boon for Bokhari, if not always for CFH. In 2017, the year Bokhari launched CFH and was first elected to Council, he earned an annualized salary of roughly $100,000 running the organization. As of 2020, his salary was $250,000, a 150% increase over three years. In that same time period, CFH’s annual revenue fell from $520,100 to $476,667, a roughly ten percent decline. In 2020, a year in which the organization’s expenses exceeded its income by roughly $468,000 — costs were $945,000 and revenue $477,000 — Bokhari’s salary accounted for more than half of CFH’s total revenues. (The drop in CFH’s revenue may have been at least partially COVID-related. The organization’s income was $910,000 in 2019 and $955,100 in 2018, though the organization also faced at least some financial struggles prior to the pandemic: In 2019, expenses exceeded revenue by more than $310,000.) None of CFH’s tax filings after 2020 are publicly available, though the non-profit appears to be a going concern and its website currently lists Bokhari as executive director, a job he spends forty hours a week performing, according to the latest available tax filings.
Using a public position to advance one’s private interests is a classic definition of corruption, and Bokhari’s reelection is therefore objectionable not only as a matter of party affiliation, but personal character. (Lest there be any temptation to characterize criticism of Bokhari’s ethics as mere partisan mudslinging, consider my criticism of Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, for trying to parlay her public office into private gain: Until her intentions became publicly known, in 2021 she planned to accept an honorary membership to an elite country club, a gift valued at $95,000. (As a point of reference, former Mayor Patrick Cannon, also a Democrat, was convicted and sent to prison in 2014 for accepting bribes totaling $50,000 — about half the value of the gift Lyles intended to accept.) As with Bokhari, Lyles’s colleagues and constituents greeted her self-dealing with a relative shrug of the shoulders. Lyles and Bokhari’s behavior indicts them; our indifference to their behavior indicts us.)
If Bokhari’s party is a threat to the republic and his personal ethics are contrary to the civic virtue essential to good self-government, what redeems his victory?
He is one of two Republicans on Council. The other nine members, along with Lyles, are Democrats. There are no Republicans on the nine-member county commission, and of the nineteen state legislators who represent some portion of Mecklenburg County in the General Assembly, only three are Republicans: Rep. John Bradford represents Huntersville and Cornelius, Sen. Vickie Sawyer’s Iredell County-based district includes a sliver of Mecklenburg County along Lake Norman, and Rep. Tricia Cotham represents Mint Hill. (Cotham, a turncoat who campaigned for the legislature in 2022 as a Democrat and then joined the GOP within months of taking office, handing the Republicans a supermajority in the House, attended Bokhari’s victory party on Election Night.)
Bokhari argued during his reelection campaign that danger lurks whenever anyone or anything monopolizes political power. “I also believe in all forms of diversity, including that of political perspective, which is nearly nonexistent in Charlotte now,” he said. An advertisement on his campaign’s website opened, “I’m Tariq Scott Bokhari, your city councilman and one of the last Republicans left.” He added, “One-party rule doesn’t work.” (The ad also demonized poor people and indulged the big-cities-are-dangerous trope so popular on the American right. “Chicago didn’t happen overnight,” Bokhari warned. He also name-checked Atlanta and San Francisco, hoping to frighten voters with played out GOP bogeymen.)
He returned to the theme of political monopoly during a joint interview with Hand on WFAE’s Charlotte Talks: “We’re basically almost a one-party city,” he said. “Diversity matters … but it includes diversity of perspective. … That diversity of perspective and thought is in danger of being extinct, wiped out in this community.” (Hand rightly pointed out during the interview that party affiliation doesn’t necessarily translate into unanimity on Council. Democrats have divided amongst themselves on a number of issues, perhaps most notably when Council narrowly approved the Unified Development Ordinance last year. The UDO overhauled the city’s development regulations, and Democrats split over whether the new rules would accelerate or slow down gentrification and make it harder or easier for poor and working people to find affordable housing.)
His villainizing aside, Bokhari’s right. We should be wary whenever any party or group of people holds a seemingly unshakeable lock on power. Political homogeneity lays a path to self-satisfaction and smugness, which can dull our imaginations and tempt us to corruption. Allowing for a diversity of perspectives, while not a full-proof safeguard against political hubris, can at least discourage its development. (As Charlotte Talks host Mike Collins suggested, Bokhari demonstrates hypocrisy regarding one-party rule, lamenting it in Charlotte while embracing it in the General Assembly — because his party is currently the one in power there.)
The GOP’s virtual demise in Charlotte means that, as a practical matter, Bokhari’s reelection means little. His primary role will be to playact as the Bill James of his generation, carrying on from the dais without much practical consequence because he lacks the votes to impose his party’s agenda on the city.
Nevertheless, despite his powerlessness — or perhaps because of it — Bokhari can serve as a helpful nuisance and a cautionary irritant, offering a contrary perspective that might help to prevent or disrupt Democratic groupthink.
For this we should mark his reelection with a single, unenthusiastic cheer.
Charlotte Citizen 