Former city councilmembers Tariq Bokhari and Larken Egleston are leading the Charlotte branch of The Southern Group, a government strategy firm.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. โ Two familiar faces in Charlotte politics have teamed up to launch a new government-relations group across party lines.
Former city councilmembers Tariq Bokhari and Larken Egleston are leading the Charlotte branch of The Southern Group, a government strategy firm with offices across the south.
Bokhari, a Republican, most recently served under the Trump administration.ย Egleston, a Democrat, previously worked with North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson. The pair said their combined experience at the federal and state levels positions them to help organizations navigate government systems.
ย “Every single company, every single organization you can think of, at some point in time is going to have to navigate either local, state or federal government,” Egleston said. โWe’ve got a couple of folks we’ve been meeting with lately that are nonprofits here in the community that are having funding shortfalls because of things that are going on at a state level and national level.โ
The group is describing its work as โgovernment relationsโ rather than lobbying โ something the two say has been a gap in Charlotte.
Bokhari left his District 6 seat on the Charlotte City Council a year ago to take a role as deputy administrator for the Federal Transit Administration. He served in the position for five months before stepping away.
โIt was an experience of a lifetime,โ Bokhari said. โI was part of that transition team. I led the entire FTA, and then the permanent administrator of the FTA came on board, handed the reins off, and it just felt like the right time to kind of say, this isn’t exactly for me, but I cherish it.”
During the interview, Bokhari and Egleston also shared their views on the I-77 Express Lanes, data centers in Charlotte and what they see as the biggest challenges facing the current City Council.
The full interview will air in the next Flashpoint episode on WCNC+.ย
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