Owen Sutkowski will officially kick off his campaign for Charlotte City Council on May 28. He might just be Charlotte’s first openly gay man on a ballot for city election.
But a couple Q-Notes readers say a man named Robert Sheets ran as an openly gay man on the ballot in 1989. In the 1990s, an open lesbian ran as a write-in candidate.
FOX Charlotte reports that the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections doesn’t keep records as far back as 1989, so they weren’t able to confirm. My job today: a search through the newspaper’s archives. It is a painstaking task; something I’m not looking forward to. But duty calls.
What is truly amazing, though, is that Sutkowski is also the youngest candidate for city election ever. At only 26, he’s embarking on a run to defeat a Democratic incumbent and win a seat on council for the largest city in the Carolinas.
Welcome to InterstateQ.com, the commentary and opinion blog of civic journalist and progressive, LGBT activist Matt Comer. Hailing from Winston-Salem, N.C., Matt, 26, now lives in Charlotte, where he works as editor of 
