Asheville City Council Candidate Andrew Fletcher is a 15-year resident of Asheville and a 27-year resident of Western North Carolina. He grew up in the foothills town of Tryon, NC. He is a member of WNC’s #1 voted Jazz Group, Firecracker Jazz Band, having played over 2,000 shows as a jazz pianist everywhere from Pack Square to The Kennedy Center. He first became politically active in 2015, when he joined the Asheville Buskers Collective and was able to help lead a successful advocacy effort to preserve the flourishing street culture of Asheville. This experience organizing the community to effect change in City Hall inspired deeper engagement with his community and led him to other roles. He generated a successful community-driven plan for the “Pit of Despair” as the Chair and Spokesperson of the Haywood Page Advisory Team. He currently serves as the Vice Chair appointed to both the City of Asheville’s Downtown Commission and the Public Art and Cultural Commission.
In addition to his work engaging the City he volunteers, as a board member with non-profits Asheville Music Professionals (AMP) and The Nina Simone Project, and is a former member of Blue Ridge Public Radio Community Forum where he contributed to strategic planning efforts. He represented the music industry as the designated spokesperson of AMP during the Noise Ordinance Debate before City Council in July of 2021. Currently, he is a senior in Economics at UNC-Asheville. As a working class candidate, he would bring a much-needed perspective to City Council decisions. He will put the working artists, people and families of Asheville first in ways that lawyers, developers, and the real estate industry never have — and never will.
“I’m running to bring the voices of the hard working people of our community to Asheville City Council. As an Independent Progressive in the style of Bernie Sanders, every decision I make will be centered around the question: “How does this affect the workers, artists and familes that make Asheville great?” As someone who works IN tourism not FOR tourism, I’ll restore the focus on YOU and your neighborhood. I’ll put YOUR needs before the wants of tourists, hoteliers and out-of-town developers Because I’m WITH YOU FOR ASHEVILLE.”