Samir Hamid Announces Mayoral Candidacy
Local business owner joins Mayor Lyles, two other challengers on ticket
Charlotte native and local business owner Samir Hamid announced his intention to enter the mayoral race on Thursday afternoon, with less than 24 hours left before Friday’s local election filing deadline.
Hamid is known in Charlotte’s creative community for his work as the founder of F4mily Matters, a streetwear brand that he launched in 2010, and organizer behind AMCS Bodega, a hip-hop music festival that he launched in 2013 and ran until its end in 2017. In a release on Thursday, he said he “is running to make Charlotte the best city in the world — not just by reputation, but by the way we live, connect, and lead.”
[UPDATE: Hamid did not meet the criteria to file as a Democrat on Thursday as he has not been affiliated with the party for the 90-day minimum. He is currently planning an independent run, for which he will need to gather a certain number of petitions supporting his candidacy by Sept. 19 to make the ballot for the general election in November.]
In Thursday’s release, Hamid listed the pillars of his platform as redefining Charlotte’s identity to reflect its true diversity, creativity and resilience; bridging divides by aligning communities that don’t always agree with empathy, not ego; and empowering the next generation by activating young creative minds, voices, and leaders to shape the future.
Son of local activist Rose Hamid, Samir has long been an advocate for the city, pushing back on those who say Charlotte lacks culture. A recent social media video depicts the clothing designer wheeling a cart full of T-shirts around Uptown and offering one to any person who can tell him what they love about Charlotte.
“Charlotte is the best city in the world, it’s time we act like it,” Hamid said in Thursday’s release. “We are creating the city my kids will grow up in, and I want to give them the world.”
Hamid’s ideas for his mayoral tenure include bringing back AMCS Bodega, hosting the quarterly music festival to showcase local artists and show that Charlotte does have culture.
“Charlotte has a history of erasing Indigenous and founding communities,” he said. “As mayor I will preserve our past identity and values while creating a clear identity for the future. What does someone from Charlotte dress like? What is music from Charlotte? What food are we known for?”
He also wants to push the city to potentially purchase the property formerly known as the Epicentre, now the Queen City Quarter, in order to get it back on track. Other priorities of his platform include balancing growth with community impact, expanding Charlotte’s highways, and “establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve to future-proof our finances.”
Hamid told Queen City Nerve that he was inspired by the mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York City.
“It started out as a joke, people saying, ‘You’re the mayor out here,’ but the more I looked into it the more I saw my ability to be effective in the position,” he said. “I consider myself a visionary, and that’s to me defined as my own ability to see far into the future and then work it back into practical steps to be taken today.”
The 33-year-old father, husband and business owner added that millennials like himself are too often ignored or not taken seriously.
“Charlotte is too young of a city to be so slow and lame trying to keep up with other slow and lame cities,” he said. “We have the opportunity to move fast and be innovative and take risks as a city. I have been working on my plan for a while and now it’s time to get into action.”
Hamid joins local community activist Jaraun “Gemini” Boyd and repeated candidate Tigress Sydney Acute McDaniel in challenging incumbent Mayor Vi Lyles, who is seeking a fifth term, on the mayoral ticket in this year’s election.
All four candidates have filed as Democrats, which means they will face one another in the September primary. With sole Republican candidate Matthew T. Grasela having withdrawn his filing, the primary will decide the next mayor of Charlotte.
Though former mayor Jennifer Roberts, who was ousted by Lyles in 2017, had previously voiced her interest in running for another term, she announced Thursday that she will not be doing so.
