By Jordan Meadows
Staff Writer
Christine Kushner has spent much of her life watching local government from the inside.
First as a journalist, then as a health policy professional, a school board member, and a county health and human services board member, she has built a career around the public systems that most residents notice only when they stop working.
Now she wants a seat on the Wake County Board of Commissioners.
Kushner, a Democrat and former chair of the Wake County Board of Education, won one of two Democratic nominations for the commission's new at-large seats in the March primary. She received about 30% of the vote in a seven-candidate field, with 68,690 votes. Mona Singh won the other Democratic nomination.
The two at-large seats will expand the commission from seven members to nine.
For Kushner, the move from the school board to county government is less a change in direction than an expansion of the work she has already been doing.
"I've gotten an added perspective of the linkages between the school system and social services, between public safety and mental health services, between housing and public safety and stability and economic mobility," Kushner said. "So all those linkages, and especially when it comes to our youth and the stresses that they're feeling, I feel like I'm coming in with a lot of experience that will inform my service as a county commissioner."
Kushner grew up in Fayetteville in a Greek-American family. Her father was a Greek Orthodox priest who founded a church there after finishing seminary, and her mother taught Greek. She attended public schools and describes her hometown as a close-knit immigrant community that also exposed her to a broad mix of people.
As a teenager, she became interested in journalism.
"I loved the news," she said. "I was a news junkie as a kid, loved watching the news, reading the newspaper."
At UNC-Chapel Hill, she studied journalism and political science. She later earned a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton. Her first career was in reporting. But covering local government changed the way she thought about public service.
She found herself fascinated by the people behind the stories: city employees, school administrators, police officers, and firefighters.
"When I was working as a reporter, I really saw the folks who worked for the towns and the cities, and the school systems, and first responders, police officers, and firefighters," Kushner said. "They just fascinated me with their life of public service. I said, ‘I love writing. I love being a reporter, and maybe this is why this interests me so much because I'm interested in this public service’."
Kushner has lived in Wake County since 1989, first in Cary and later in Raleigh. Her professional work included health care policy and efforts to expand access to health care, including supporting grassroots primary-care systems in rural communities.
School Board and Health Board
She eventually became involved in her children's schools, volunteering in classrooms and joining the PTA. Kushner served on a superintendent's parent advisory committee and on an advisory committee for former Wake school board member Rosa Gill. She began attending school board meetings and, in 2011, decided to run.
She won a seat representing central and western Raleigh, including two terms as chair. Those years included some of the school system's most contentious debates—and the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kushner says the experience gave her a practical education in the consequences of local government decisions: even seemingly routine decisions could generate intense reactions.
"The most emails [I received] were around the calendar and bell schedule," she said.
One issue still bothers her: the early start times for high schools.
"I know high school students should start later," she said, but the school system did not have the buses and resources to make the change.
After leaving the school board, Kushner joined the Wake County Health and Human Services Board. The position exposed her to a different part of county government: public health, social services, foster care, environmental health, and programs serving residents in crisis.
She talks about the experience almost as a continuation of her education work.
One example she cites is the county's foster care system.
At one point, she said, roughly 20 children were staying in the social services building because the county could not find appropriate placements for them. County staff worked to reduce the number of children staying in the building and expand placement options. Kushner specifically praised the county's use of a program called “Kinship Care”.
"The fact that these children can stay with an aunt, or grandparent, or an uncle, or a cousin, I mean, it's powerful for that child to be able to remain in their family, and it's led to greater stability," she said. "And also that the system and staff are able to support that extended family who help those children."
Housing, Transportation, Growth
Kushner identifies three issues particularly pressing for Wake County: the strain placed on local governments by state and federal funding decisions, underfunded public schools and increasing homelessness.
Kushner credits local leaders with attracting businesses, expanding parks and greenways, supporting schools and building an arts and cultural economy. But she also sees the consequences of growth: higher housing costs, busy roads, crowded schools and residents who have not shared equally in the county's economic expansion.
"A lot of our issues around housing affordability and homelessness and social services are regional issues," Kushner said. "People are coming to Wake County because they see us as a place of opportunity, and some land on their feet, and some do not. So how do we think regionally to get state support for folks who are immigrating and coming into Wake County? Another issue of regional work needs to be around transit and traffic."
She wants the county to work more closely with local governments and more county services delivered through the county's five regional centers so residents do not always have to travel downtown for government services.
Education
Kushner's school board background is likely to be particularly relevant if she joins a commission responsible for funding county government and providing financial support to Wake County Public School System.
She has criticized the state's approach to public education and said the county has increasingly had to fill funding gaps. The issue became especially visible in 2025, when the commission increased school-system funding by $40 million—less than the approximately $60 million the school board had requested.
Kushner has called the decision difficult but argues that the underlying problem is larger than one county budget. She points to state funding for private-school vouchers and what she considers inadequate state support for public schools.
"The state government and legislature have a constitutional obligation to fund public education for every child," Kushner said. "Public schools serve every child. Every child has the right to a public education, and they're inclusive schools, no matter where students come from, their zip code, their race, their background, their status; public schools welcome everyone."
Her focus is particularly strong on students who require additional services, including special education students and children living in poverty. She also wants the county's health and human services resources — nurses, social workers, psychologists and mental-health professionals — better connected to schools.
Property Taxes and Data Centers
Rising home values have increased the financial pressure on some longtime homeowners, particularly people living on fixed or limited incomes. Kushner supports expanding means-tested property-tax assistance rather than broadly reducing taxes. She also favors preserving existing affordable housing because, in her view, keeping an existing affordable home is often faster than creating a new one.
Her broader concern is that the county's growth could increasingly benefit residents who arrive with the resources to take advantage of it while pushing out people who have lived here for years.
Some of that divergence has influenced her support for a moratorium or pause on large data-center projects while local officials establish stricter rules. Her concerns are primarily infrastructure and environmental: water consumption, electricity demand, and who pays for the infrastructure required by massive facilities. She also wants data centers to shoulder more of those costs themselves.
Public safety and Health Policy
Asked about large gatherings of young people that have prompted police responses and arrests, she said law enforcement needs to protect the public but also argued for safe places for young people to gather. She has emphasized coordination among the county, municipalities, police departments, parents and families.
Kushner has also focused heavily on maternal health and racial disparities in health outcomes. She pointed to county efforts examining maternal health and said she would support expanding health and social services for Black women and families.
"We do know that Black women have worse outcomes in the healthcare system," she said. "We know that we need to educate our providers to be more responsive to Black women in pregnancy, both prenatally and postnatally, to take the prevention issues seriously to help make sure they have healthy pregnancies, but also the postpartum issues so that they are supported."
Kushner's health policy background also informs her view of the proposed combination of WakeMed and Atrium Health. She has said WakeMed may not be able to remain independent indefinitely, but she believes the decision to approve the merger deserved more public discussion and remains concerned about governance and oversight.
On Sept. 21, commissioners voted 5-2 to approve changes to WakeMed's governing documents that allow the proposed combination with Atrium to proceed, with Tara Waters and Vickie Adamson voting against it. WakeMed says it will remain a nonprofit with local leadership and that the county will continue appointing a majority of its board.
Kushner's concern is consistent with an issue she raises elsewhere in her campaign: who is accountable when an institution provides a service that residents depend on?
Accountability and Transparency
Kushner says elected officials owe constituents an explanation, even when residents disagree with the decision. But she also says accountability means being willing to change course.
"There are many times when I came in with some assumptions that were changed by the feedback that I got," Kushner said. "So it's critically important to get that feedback. And there are lots of times I changed my mind because I said, you know, that's a great point. That neighborhood or that family or that school is being impacted disproportionately. And we need to change what we're doing. So that is what should happen in the system. And that is accountability."
She wants to carry the same practice into county government: listen, explain decisions, and acknowledge when community feedback changes the way she sees an issue.
