A Raleigh City Council candidate's Facebook account sent a Democratic Party official a string of insults and messages that included the phrase “am at your door,” according to the official, who says he is now weighing whether to report the exchange to police. Alex LaFond, a Raleigh resident and member of the North Carolina Democratic Party State Executive Committee, says the messages came from the account of Marc Scruggs, who is running against incumbent Christina Jones for the District E council seat in the November 3 general election.
LaFond told The News & Observer that he does not believe the messages amount to a credible threat, saying, “I don't believe there's any sort of credible threat.” Even so, he described the tone of the exchange in stark terms, telling the paper, “You have communicated violence, harassment, and stalking.” LaFond said his first direct contact with Scruggs came on Aug. 6, when he messaged the candidate to ask, “So whens your next public appearance?” as part of an effort to learn more about Scruggs' ideas for office.
According to LaFond's account relayed to the newspaper, the Scruggs account responded that same day with, “When can I assure you'll be there. With a check that will not bounce.” The exchange escalated from there. The account went on to write, “Show the public how chicken and what a we little boy. Be jogging tomorrow. Right behind the CCC at eight. Meet me?” and later added, “Come on baby! Jogging in the AM. Join me you big f'n woosie.”
Insults Continued After LaFond Stopped Responding
LaFond said the account also called him a “punk a—” and a “beer bellied woosie” in comments and direct messages, and that after he described the conduct publicly, four additional messages followed, including one that read, “Am at your door,” and another, “Look out your door.” The Scruggs account reportedly sent numerous direct messages even after LaFond stopped engaging, and the messages from the account stopped at 11:24 p.m. last Tuesday, per the newspaper's reporting.
It remains unclear whether the messages are legitimate communications from Scruggs himself, and Scruggs did not answer emailed questions from The News & Observer about the account or its contents. The newspaper also left a note at Scruggs' home and separately contacted Toni Flynn, who said Thursday that Scruggs was on vacation and had been informed of the newspaper's questions.
A Comeback Bid Built on Decades-Old Raleigh Roots
Scruggs previously served two terms on the Raleigh City Council from 1995 to 1999. During that stint he chaired the council's Economic Development Committee and helped oversee agreements tied to major projects including the Lenovo Center, the N.C. Museum of History, and the WakeMed Soccer Park, according to his campaign website. His family ties to the city run deep: his grandfather, James Briggs, served as Raleigh's mayor from 1951 to 1953, and Scruggs has worked at Briggs Hardware and Brown-Wynne Funeral Home in Raleigh, later returning to school at age 60 to earn a funeral director's degree, as INDY Week has reported.
On policy, Scruggs has campaigned on adding police officers and increasing their pay, and he has advocated for reopening Fayetteville Street to traffic. The downtown street was originally closed to cars and turned into a pedestrian mall in 1977 before city leaders voted in 2006 to reopen it to vehicles following a $10 million revitalization effort, according to a history documented by Modern Cities.
Gaza Vote Resurfaces in Online Sparring
The Scruggs account also made comments that Jones believed referenced her views on Palestine as supporting terrorists. Jones responded to that characterization by calling it “the racism of saying I am a terrorism supporter.” Jones introduced a resolution in 2024 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza; the measure did not pass the Raleigh City Council, which rejected it in a split vote that March, according to reporting from INDY Week at the time.
Jones was first elected to the District E seat in November 2022 after previously chairing the Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council, running on a platform centered on community engagement and restoring neighborhood advisory bodies that a prior council had defunded. LaFond, for his part, said Scruggs should just go back into retirement, a remark that underscores how personal the race has already become months ahead of the vote.
New Election Rules Set the Stage for a Two-Way Race
The District E contest is playing out under Raleigh's newly restructured election calendar. The city council passed Ordinance (2024) 627 in May 2024, overhauling municipal elections beginning in 2026 by creating nonpartisan March primaries and shifting council seats toward four-year staggered terms. Because only Jones and Scruggs filed for District E, the race bypassed the March primary and went straight to the November general election ballot.
Legal experts note that North Carolina sets a high bar for turning online hostility into criminal charges. Under state law, communicating threats is a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to 120 days in jail when a person willfully threatens injury or property damage in a way that would cause a reasonable person to believe the threat will be carried out, while repeated harassing electronic messages can constitute cyberstalking, a Class 2 misdemeanor. A legal analysis from the UNC School of Government has noted that establishing criminal liability in such cases requires proving credible intent to cause fear of immediate injury, not merely offensive or disruptive speech.
For now, LaFond says he has not ruled out reporting the messages to police if the situation develops further, though he continues to describe them as unlikely to meet that legal threshold. With Election Day still months away, the unresolved questions over who controlled the Scruggs account — and what, if anything, comes of the exchange — are likely to keep shadowing an already contentious District E race.
