Thomas Stith III
American politician
Thomas A. Stith III is an American politician. Stith was a member of the city council of Durham, North Carolina from 1999 to 2007. More recently, he has served as Program Director for Economic Development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, and then as North Carolina district director for the federal Small Business Administration. In December 2020, Stith was selected as the next president of the North Carolina Community College System.
Political career
An alumnus of North Carolina Central University, Stith worked for the conservative John William Pope Civitas Institute. He was first elected to the Durham City Council in 1999 and re-elected in 2001 and 2003, holding one of the at-large seats on the council.
Stith unsuccessfully campaigned for the Republican nomination for North Carolina Lieutenant Governor in the 2004 election cycle.
2007 mayoral campaign
Stith ran for mayor of Durham against incumbent Democrat Bill Bell in 2007. Stith attacked Bell over several city issues including violence. During the weekend of October 13 and October 14, two people were murdered in Durham.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7794208. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2007, 2020 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Stith III” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.