Colleagues prepare to honor Clement

Nov. 30--DURHAM -- In any city, elected officials come and go, but it's rare indeed for the goodbyes to be as long in coming as they will be Monday night when Howard Clement steps down from the City Council.

Clement is retiring after a 30 1/2 -year run in office, making way for new Ward 2 Councilman-elect Eddie Davis.

A former N.C. Mutual Life Insurance executive, Clement has been a factor in Durham politics going all the way back to the 1960s, when he figured in the era's battles over desegregation.

And he departs with about as much council experience as the last six members to leave it -- Mike Woodard, Farad Ali, Thomas Stith, John Best, Lewis Cheek and Tamra Edwards -- amassed among them.

"His institutional knowledge, having been there as long as he has, having seen different managers, different administrators and different councilpeople, that's been a plus for us, at least for the time I've been serving," Mayor Bill Bell said.

Bell will join Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden in inheriting from Clement the distinction of being the city's longest-tenured elected officials. Both joined the council in 2001, the watershed year that saw it downsize from 13 members to seven.

Clement for health reasons opted to step down rather than run for re-election this year. He's been ailing since late 2011.

The Howard University graduate joined the council as an appointee in May 1983, before winning election in his own right in the fall of 1985.

But he arrived there as a political veteran, having helped organize a boycott of downtown businesses in 1968 that became one of the signature events of the latter phase of Durham's desegregation battles.

His involvement in that stood out because of his position at N.C. Mutual. "He was sort of a rebel in that respect," said Bell, who arrived in Durham in 1968.

Clement went on in the late 1970s to serve a year and a half in the N.C. House, representing Durham as a mid-term replacement for Rep. Mickey Michaux after Michaux was appointed a chief federal prosecutor.

Throughout his career, Clement was able to combine advocacy for civil rights and advocacy for business, said Ken Spaulding, a lawyer who defeated him in the 1978 state House election.

"He was very much interested in seeing [that] there was full participation by everyone in the development of the community and the development process," said Spaulding, who joined Bell in saying Clement has always fought to open job opportunities to blacks and other minorities.

Clement also stood out for a willingness to carve his own path politically.

He's been a member of both parties and for much of his city service was a Republican. But he left the GOP in 2006, and in 2010, after supporting the election of President Barack Obama, registered as a Democrat.

"He switched political parties and that kind of thing, but what didn't change was his core principles," said Councilman Steve Schewel, who shares Clement's longstanding opposition to the state's use of the death penalty.

Bell and Clement have been allies in recent years, but that hasn't always been the case. Clement was mayor pro tem to Bell's predecessor, former Mayor Nick Tennyson, and long before that hadn't exactly encouraged Bell's initial foray into county politics in 1972.

The mayor recalled encountering what was then valid skepticism.

"I called Howard up and told him I was thinking about running [for a County Commissioners seat] and would like to have his endorsement. He said, 'Who knows Bill Bell?'" he said.

But Clement has always had a knack for making friends despite political or policy differences, Bell said.

"I don't think he meets any strangers," Bell said. "Some people have a natural smile. Howard has a natural smile. That's important when you're doing this kind of work."

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