Future Mecklenburg commissioner Charles DeLoach wants to ‘make change for young families’

• 

• 

Charles DeLoach will be the next Mecklenburg County Commissioner for District 5; Laura Meier decided to not run for reelection

Charles DeLoach, a young husband and father living in Charlotte, believes many well-meaning older politicians don’t understand the struggles of younger generations. For many millennials and Gen Zers across the country, the financial freedom their parents had at their age feels unattainable. Rapidly-growing Mecklenburg County is no exception.

“Not having someone [in office locally] with my specific experience of raising children in the year 2026, with all the challenges that that brings, I think has left a bit of a blind spot,” DeLoach, 33, told The Election Hub.

On the current commissioners’ board, the youngest member is Leigh Altman, at 54.

DeLoach, a Democrat, decided to take matters into his own hands. On Nov. 19, 2025, he announced his campaign to represent District 5. Later that day, the south Mecklenburg district’s commissioner, Laura Meier, announced she would not seek re-election — noting that “there is a whole younger generation out there that are waiting to make a difference,” and paving the way for DeLoach to run unopposed. She endorsed DeLoach several days later. 

DeLoach’s pathway to politics unfolded naturally. He grew up in Wilmington and moved to California in high school, where he also attended college. His first job out of college was with Turner Broadcasting (fully merged into Warner Bros. Discovery and now Skydance), selling ads for TV channels leading up to the 2016 election. 

He told The Election Hub that he witnessed how inflammatory language nets more viewers and revenue — and to try to bridge divides in his own community, he began hosting regular dialogues over beer and snacks with his friends. The group grew from there and became a nonprofit, Common Space Forum, which operated in three cities including Charlotte.

“That was really important to me — that experience of just being able to connect with people across ideological lines and have a normal conversation like human beings, as opposed to shouting at each other online, which is easier and where a lot of people tend to have their political dialogues nowadays,” he said. The experience has since shaped his approach to politics.

DeLoach, a civil litigation attorney, went to Elon Law School and UNC Law School, and periodically returned to Charlotte to visit family and for various jobs before settling down there full-time in 2023. He quickly got involved in local politics, co-founding Indivisible Charlotte-affiliated CLT Engage and serving as a regional vice chair for the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party.

As District 5 commissioner, DeLoach says his main priorities will be affordable housing, childcare and healthcare. 

In a region that sees an influx of approximately 135 people every day, DeLoach proposes building more housing to meet the supply and demand, specifically by cutting through some of the red tape that prolongs the construction process and contributes to high prices.

For county-funded or facilitated housing projects, DeLoach supports incentivizing a minimum amount of units to be affordable to lower-income households. His housing plan also includes planning new housing around transit accessibility, partnering with community organizations to monitor and help vulnerable residents who could be at risk for displacement, and supporting residents as they transition from renting to homeownership. 

As the father of a one-year-old daughter — and a son on the way — DeLoach says he’s fortunate he and his wife are able to shoulder the cost of childcare, but he knows that’s not the reality of every parent in Mecklenburg County with young children. 

In 2025, the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation reported that in Mecklenburg County, the average cost of care for one infant in a childcare center is around $1,200 per month — a staggering amount that often forces parents to choose between paying for childcare or having one parent stay home to take care of the baby. For single parents, the ramifications are even more severe. Discounts for multiple children don’t help — DeLoach said that for his family, their childcare center’s discount when his son is enrolled will be about $30 per month. 

“It's a really big problem that, frankly, is just not getting enough attention. And I think part of it is because we have really great elected leaders but we don't have anyone who knows what it's like to raise an infant in the year of 2026. And it's just a different experience,” he said.

DeLoach pointed to MECK Pre-K as proof that the county can provide quality, affordable childcare — but that approach needs to be improved and extended to younger children too, he says. The program provides county-funded childcare to 4-year-olds who live in Mecklenburg County, giving subsidies directly to facilities. But the onus is still on parents, who might find the process confusing — and not everyone knows MECK Pre-K is an option, not every facility accepts the subsidies and children could start kindergarten before they even get off a daycare waitlist. 

DeLoach says he supports giving subsidies the county already has allocated to childcare (avoiding raising taxes) directly to centers so they can hire more employees and expand their capacity, cap tuition and even partner with community colleges and universities to pay student teachers — “buying down” the cost of care, and investing in employees. And he says his plan would aim to take the burden off Mecklenburg County parents to fill out all the paperwork, for a program some might not even realize they’re eligible for. 

As the county continues to grow, his childcare proposal also includes preventing existing centers from being displaced, leveraging zoning tools to encourage them to be built in new developments and building centers in existing county-owned buildings or land, especially near major workplaces. 

Part of his healthcare plan centers around upcoming changes to Medicaid under the Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, many of which will go into effect in early 2027 — right after the midterms, and just as DeLoach enters office. 

One of these changes includes eligibility checks every six months, which will drastically increase the workload of county staff, who are responsible for determining eligibility. It also puts the onus on recipients, some of whom might lose their healthcare if they don’t know they have to re-confirm their eligibility. 

DeLoach called the changes “morally disgusting.” 

“I think a lot of people will continue to qualify despite the work requirements, but because they don't know that they're going to have to do all of this extra work, they could lose their healthcare,” he said. “And it's a time tax for people who make the least amount of money. If you're qualifying for Medicaid, by definition, you are in a financially difficult position.”

The county has already amped up resources to support the employees who determine eligibility. But DeLoach plans to take this assistance even further, and also reach out to the community to make sure recipients know about nearing changes to their healthcare. 

“I want us at every single street fair with a table that says, ‘Did you know there are changes to Medicaid?’ and forms and resources so that people can come up to the table where they already are and find out about this and get help,” he said. “And maybe I'll get in there [the Board of Commissioners] and we'll learn of some other levers we can pull.”

His approach to healthcare also includes a plan for “whole community wellness.” This includes mental health — including, among children, proposing phone-free initiatives at schools and investing in school counselors — and food security, as well as maternal and infant health. It also includes tackling substance use and overdose, supporting expanded Narcan distribution, mobile treatment clinics and peer-led recovery programs. 

Although DeLoach is guaranteed a spot on the Board of Commissioners, he says he still wants voters to know his aims. And in the meantime, he’s still involved with CLT Engage and other organizations, campaigning for other Democrats whose political futures aren’t yet set in stone and encouraging young voters to be civically engaged. 

“There are just very few young people who care at all, despite the fact that these issues impact us so heavily and will be impacting us for a very long time,” DeLoach told The Election Hub. “And I think with the county, I’m positioned to be in a place where I can make change for young families.”

Read more about the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners races at the Mecklenburg County Election Hub.