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GREENSBORO — Tonya Clinkscale and Luther Falls Jr. shared a quiet moment after Tuesday's District 1 primary results rolled in.

Clinkscale had just advanced to the general election, where she'll face incumbent T. Dianne Bellamy-Small for a spot on the City Council. Falls was eliminated, but he wanted her to know something important.

"He just said he was going to support me," Clinkscale said in an interview at the Old Guilford County Courthouse. Falls could not be reached for confirmation.

That support could be helpful to Clinkscale, who has a lot of ground to cover if she wants to unseat Bellamy-Small, a two-term incumbent. Bellamy-Small gathered 37 percent of the vote to Clinkscale's 26 percent, according to complete but unofficial results.

Also eliminated were machine designer Charles Dayton Coffey and custom clothier James W. Carpenter Jr.

The election was a high point in a trying two-year term for Bellamy-Small. She was accused of leaking a confidential police report to the media and intimidating a police officer who pulled her over for speeding.

She has denied both charges and said Tuesday that she hoped some of the distractions "that have beset me in my second term do not follow me into a third term."

"All we have is allegations," she said, "and none of them have ever been proven."

Those allegations and others prompted the city's first recall election in 80 years. It was held in August, and Bellamy-Small survived when 58 percent of those voting said she should remain in office.

Asked what she had learned from the recall, she said: "I've learned that everything in a democracy is not fair. And that recall was not fair."

Some of her supporters agree. Constance Williams, a New Jersey transplant who was handing out fliers at Vandalia Presbyterian Church, said she met Bellamy-Small a few weeks ago after being dismayed by the recall effort.

"Maybe it taught her a lesson," Williams said.

Falls had a similar take on that election, which splashed Bellamy-Small all over the news a month and a half before the primary. He had hoped to improve upon his showing of two years ago, when Bellamy-Small beat him by just 49 votes.

"With the close election we had in 2005, I'm sure that helped her," he said.

But it wasn't to be. In Tuesday's primary, unofficial results showed him losing to Clinkscale by 45 votes.

"That's the way it goes," he said. "Poor turnout, and the people that did turn out spoke."

Bellamy-Small preferred to talk about standing up for all the people in her district and pledged to keep working today. "Tomorrow morning,

8 o'clock, I'm back on the job," she said.

Contact Nate DeGraff at 373-7024 or ndegraff@news-record.com