MOORESVILLE, N.C.—Dave Homick loves this fast-growing town’s nickname, Race City USA, a nod to its deep Nascar ties. But he hates the attention it’s getting now for a decidedly different sort of raciness.
Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney was caught with his pants down—and not in a figurative sense—inside town hall, on camera, during the wee hours, in the company of a female journalist.
The episode occurred in 2024 but is now bubbling up on multiple fronts. Three former town employees are suing Mooresville officials, alleging retaliation for their efforts to preserve the footage or investigate. Town commissioners passed a no-confidence vote this month urging Carney to quit. And a judge last week ordered the town to release video of the incident, a move the town forestalled by appealing Wednesday.
In a place where traffic-choking growth often dominates the talk, locals are trading questions and theories about a man and his missing pants. From Main Street shops to big-box store parking lots, they express a mix of anger, dismay, bewilderment and sometimes laughter.
“It never goes away,” Commissioner Eddie Dingler, the mayor pro tem, said of talk about the incident. “It’s distracting.”
“It’s an insult to the city,” said Homick, a 71-year-old retired UPS driver, during his daily stop at Richard’s Coffee Shop and military museum. Homick thinks Carney should step down: “He put himself in that position. He’s got to pay the price.”
Dave Homick, a retired UPS driver, called the scandal an ‘insult to the city’ and said Carney should step down. Scott Calvert/WSJ
Carney, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, shows no sign of resigning before his term ends in 2027. He has publicly apologized for what he called an innocent visit to town hall, spurred by a bad reaction he had to alcohol and medication that eventually made him vomit. He has told people he took off his pants to clean them.
Graddie Lane, 68, manager of a wine shop, offered a character reference for the mayor. “I’ve known Chris for over 20 years. I find him to be one of the most caring, honest, loving, accepting people that I know,” he said, adding, “Other than the current fracas, I think he has done a good job.”
Graddie Lane, who manages a wine shop, called the mayor ‘one of the most caring, honest, loving, accepting people that I know.’ Scott Calvert/WSJ
Carney, a Republican, is a political fixture in this town of 53,000 residents north of Charlotte. Voters put him on the seven-member town board in 2005, and he served two years in the state Senate. In 2023 he was elected mayor.
Word of Carney’s 12:25 a.m. stop at town hall on Oct. 10, 2024 emerged later that year when a former political opponent raised it at a meeting of the town board. “You were conducting town business during that time or something personal?” the man asked the mayor.
In an interview with the Iredell Free News the next day, Carney, 54, confirmed he had gone into the brick building on Main Street after hours with the journalist, whom he called a longtime friend.
Carney told the outlet he met the woman for a margarita to talk about town business, after dining with a group. As the pair left, he began feeling “violently ill” and, deeming it a bad idea to drive home, went to town hall to retrieve a cellphone and sober up. The woman joined him, he said, out of concern for his well-being. (She didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
The Mooresville town hall where the incident in question occurred back in 2024. Scott Calvert/WSJ
Carney said inside the building, he felt dizzy and nauseous. The mayor said they stayed in his office for several hours, and that he had left his office to go to the bathroom. Carney denied anything untoward, declaring, “There is no sex tape.”
Christopher Lee, Mooresville’s former director of innovation and technology, tells a different story in a federal lawsuit he filed this month against the town, Carney and other officials. Lee alleges he was pressured to resign because he insisted video of the incident be preserved.
Lee’s lawsuit said the CCTV video shows the mayor in a state of partial or complete undress. “The footage is inconsistent with the Mayor’s public explanation that the incident involved vomiting and instead depicts nudity and sexual arousal,” the suit said, “rendering the footage uniquely sensitive and politically explosive for Town leadership.”
(The town has denied wrongdoing regarding Lee or the two other ex-employees; Carney recently said he didn’t retaliate against anyone.)
Michelle Collins, an accountant who works downtown, said it doesn’t make sense someone would remove their trousers at town hall to clean them off. “I don’t think most people believe that, considering you had your pants down and there was somebody else with you,” said Collins, 55.
Retiree Pattie Oliphant bemoaned the “sad state of affairs” for Carney, his family and the office of mayor.
“The story itself is just bizarre. It’s just embarrassing that something like that would happen, regardless of the actual facts of it,” Oliphant said as she met her sister-in-law at a restaurant for omelets and grits.
Retiree Pattie Oliphant, right, at a restaurant with her sister-in-law Carol, said the story is ‘just bizarre.’ Scott Calvert/WSJ
Not everyone is perturbed. “I think it’s hilarious,” retiree Steve Cox said with a laugh, outside a Tractor Supply store. “How stupid can you be?”
Carney’s colleagues don’t find it amusing. On April 6, the board passed the no confidence vote, 4-2. “What we permit, we promote. What we do not condemn, we condone,” said Commissioner Dana Tucker, who led the effort.
Commissioner Frank Owens, a dissenting vote, said the mayor deserved some slack: “Everybody has a bad night.”
Before the vote, Carney said from the dais that he showed poor judgment. The fact he was with a woman, “I know on paper that raises questions,” he said. “In hindsight, what this has done for our community, I am truly sorry, what it’s done to my family, my wife, my children.”
Mooresville resident Mikayla Hamilton, 23, finds much about the episode baffling, including Carney’s decision to go to town hall rather than head home. “Call an Uber,” she said at a cafe where she was writing.
She hopes the public will get to see the video. Not that she plans to watch, however much is blurred out. “I might just rather read a description of it,” she said.
