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GREENSBORO — She sees herself not as a "politician," but rather a "servant-leader." Her detractors call her irresponsible, an embarrassment to her constituents, and enough of them banded together over the spring to force a special recall election scheduled for Tuesday.

But T. Dianne Bellamy-Small is determined to keep her seat. For more than a year, she has largely ignored the mainstream media, choosing to take her message to the residents of southeast Greensboro one church and one neighborhood association meeting at a time. Should she survive the recall Tuesday, the two-term incumbent must make it through a five-way primary in October, and then a November general election.

Bellamy-Small, 55, spoke with the News & Record last week about the allegations of wrongdoing her critics level against her and the unorthodox — if not brash — approach to the City Council that has frayed relationships with her colleagues.



About City Council. What's your relationship like with your other eight colleagues?

"It's been good, it's been not so good, it's been them against me, it's been me trying to find my way to establish that I'm there to support my district first, but yet at the same time I am one of them. I'm an individual that does a lot of things by myself. Some people call that being a loner. ...

"I think that the relationship went south when what I call the 'Council of Six' decided that they wanted to accuse me of leaking the RMA report, because my feeling was, is that if they had a problem with that, they should have come to me, and asked me, and they did not."



I want to talk about the "Council of Six." Can you describe what that is?

"The 'Council of Six,' there are six white members of council, and there are three African Americans members of council. And it has been demonstrated, and the mayor, if you talk to him he'll tell that he did this, he's done this, where he has consulted with them and left us out. But then there have been times when there was, if you will, a "black" issue, he would come and get the three of us and ask us. ...

"And I've seen a number of occasions when there were budget discussions held with two or three or four of them, and then when we would finally get into the briefing or the meeting, then they would say, 'Well, we've already discussed this and this is what we've decided,' and we would look around go, 'Well, did anybody talk to you? No?' So we've been left out of that loop, you know, a lot of times."



Tell me about the RMA report and what led up to the controversy that has contributed to the recall.

"I got my copy. Mitch gave it to me. I took it back to my desk, I was working that particular day, and Mitch said, 'Well, I'm getting ready to leave.' Well, I said, 'I'm leaving with you,' and so I grabbed the stuff and left. OK? Didn't look to get the report out of my car until four days later, and when I went to get it, I couldn't find it. ... So when I went back to the office the report was laying on my desk. I got it. Didn't think anything of it.

"But our offices were totally unsecure. In fact, our little area, anybody could walk in there at any time, look at our stuff. In fact we had been warned not to leave sensitive stuff, you know, on our desk or even put it in the trash can because some of you media people would come in there and go through the trash can. Well, the next conversation that came up was after you guys ran the article the first of March saying that you had this particular copy that had this number of pages.

"And so they said, well, the only people who had that particular copy, because there were various copies out there with various levels of information, was the one that we had been given."



Why is the source of the leak of the RMA report so important to the other eight members of council?

"When I came on council as the only new person, stuff was being leaked, and people just kind of took a 'ha-ha-ha' attitude about it. Since the RMA report, there has been other sensitive stuff that has been leaked to one of your competitors, and an individual, and then, you know, even the mayor has gotten upset about the fact that we go into a closed session, and before the next morning, the stuff is out. So leaking is a problem as far as I'm concerned. ...

"I've never been the source of any leak to any media outlet. ... That's what I want the News & Record to do, is simply say to people, you know, she is not our source. When you say you're protecting your source, you still haven't told who it is, and besides, if I were the source, would I be crazy enough to ask the media to acknowledge who the source is, or that it's not me? So I really feel like this was media-hyped."



Was it good that the information from the report was made public?

"Good? I think it caused some challenges for us to be able to do the kinds of investigations and stuff that needed to be done, and that needed to be done without people knowing your every move. ... As far as the citizens are concerned, they were entitled to it. Probably don't think it should have been out there as early as it was because our folk, and other law enforcement entities, really needed to do their work first.

"So, you know, if I had had any say in when it got out, I don't think I would have agreed with it being out as soon as it was."



Is this recall about race?

"If you've got eyes to see and ears to hear, the numbers speak for themselves. You had a white member of council who asked for my resignation. Three of the petitioners are white. And then you had a guy who doesn't even live in my district, though he owns a business there, who is white.

"You have 65 percent of the people who signed the petition are white. Now what their motive is, no one has come to me and said, you know, 'I don't like you because you're a black person.' But what else can I say?"



Would you have run for re-election had Florence Gatten not held her press conference and called for your resignation?

"I was already planning to run for re-election. Because whenever I started this journey, I had intended to at least serve three terms, because I felt that it would take that long to accomplish the things I want to accomplish."



So why is there the animosity that's been expressed toward you from other council members?

"You have to ask them. 'Cause I like them. I respect them. I tolerate their idiosyncrasies. So you have to ask them that."



What's the strategy from here until November? You have the recall. Then you have the primary. Then you have the general election.

"I'm planning to do it the way I've been doing it all the time, one voter at a time. ... Anybody who wants to ask me a question, as long as it's a fair and legitimate question, I have no problem with answering it. I use what you would consider nonmainstream media. ...

"The friendlier medias that have been friendly toward me, I have no problem with sitting down with them and trying to get my side of the story out. I pass out literature and stuff all the time telling people what I am."



Do you consider yourself a polarizing figure?

"Polarizing figure? Those are terms and labels that you guys put on folk. I believe that I'm a person who stands for what I believe to be right, and sometimes that's not comfortable for folk, because we still have '-isms.' We still have racism. We still have sexism. We still have ageism."



What don't people know about T. Dianne Bellamy-Small?

"I was excited and still somewhat am about being a public servant. I haven't liked all of the meanness I have experienced because you have to realize the accusations that have been made against me, none of them have been proven. ...

"I've gotten a lot of nasty calls, where I've been called the n-word, and the b-word, yet these people aren't brave enough to say, 'I am so-and-so, and I disagree with what you're doing, and here's my name and phone number. Call me.' But that's hurtful to me, because I'm a very sensitive person. ...

"When people call me and say, 'Dianne, I think ...,' I listen to them."



Contact Eric J.S. Townsend at 373-7008 or etownsend@news-record.com