ROANOKE, Va. – Former Roanoke City Mayor David Bowers is throwing his hat in the ring for the Star City’s top public office.
In December 2023, current Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea announced that he wouldn’t be seeking another mayoral term in the upcoming 2024 election after serving the city for close to two decades.
Just this week, Bowers announced his mayoral candidacy, this time as a Republican candidate. It’s a change in pace for the Roanoke native who served as mayor as a Democrat twice from 1992 to 2000 and again from 2012 to 2016. From 2008 to 2012, he identified as an independent.
[RELATED: Former Roanoke Mayor Bowers announces switch to Republican Party]
Now, he’s switching to the Republican Party, where he feels more at home, according to Bowers’s previous interview with WSLS 10. He told 10 News in September that he believed some of the ideals and policies historically championed by Democrats had shifted, leading to his decision to switch parties.
“I was a Democrat for a long time and then an independent,” Bowers said previously. “Because of the circumstances on the national level, on the state level, and on the local level…I decided I was more comfortable being with the Republican Party.”
Bowers graduated from Patrick Henry High School and earned his bachelor’s degree at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. He then went on to receive his law degree from Loyola University New Orleans and a Master’s in Liberal Arts from Hollins University.
Bowers was elected to two terms on the city council, in 1984 and 1988, and then was elected mayor in 1992. He returned to the mayorship in 2008 and served two more terms until retiring in 2016.
Roanoke City Councilwoman Stephanie Moon Reynolds and Vice Mayor Joe Cobb are also running.
The general election will be held on Nov. 5, 2024.
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