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Vilma Leake was clearly feeling the moment. At a swearing-in of the new Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners earlier this month, she had much of the crowd cheering as she raised her voice to advocate for young black men and quality education for children of color.

The fourth-term District 2 commissioner, a liberal Democrat, encouraged commissioners to reconcile after weeks of rancor over who should be chairman. We better work together and save our children, she said. Education is the last thing on the agenda for children of color. Ive been working on this for a long time. My hair is gray, but its gorgeous.

She ended to an ovation from some in the crowd, her raised fist clenched as she stood and shouted: God bless you, and power to the people.

Jim Puckett, the devoutly conservative Republican whom District 1 voters returned in November to the seat he held for three terms until 2006, sat at the end of the dais, two seats from Leake. When it came his turn for speech-making, he looked toward Leake and deadpanned: This is the problem of being last. Vilma stole my speech. I have a few things scribbled since she took it from me years ago.

... I will remind Vilma that gray hair is a sign of wisdom and I have more than she does.

Among those laughing the hardest was Leake.

Puckett and Leake come from different backgrounds and districts, and hold opposite political views on most issues. Yet at a time when politics have become a polarizing affair from Washington, D.C., to the most local of levels, they have cultivated an unlikely friendship that goes back to the late 1990s when they served together on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.

Their relationship could help commissioners Chairman Trevor Fullers recent calls for unity. Animosity among commissioners has at times derailed emotional debates, particularly when former Chairwoman Pat Cotham led the successful effort to fire longtime County Manager Harry Jones. Tensions and name-calling arose recently after Cotham said she should be chairman again because she got the most votes in the November election. The board narrowly re-elected Fuller to another year.

The Leake-Puckett friendship was galvanized during one of the most contentious times in Mecklenburg history, a time of grave community anxiety when Puckett led a successful fight to end race-based student assignments dismantling the 30-year practice of busing as a tool to desegregate schools and instead under a federal judges order began placing students in schools close to home.

Leake was on the other side, fearing that ending busing would only return CMS to a segregated system and deny minority students an equal education. Some say her fears came true. A study shows that nearly half of all CMS African-American and Hispanic students attend schools that are more than 90 percent nonwhite.

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For Democrat Leake and Republican Puckett, an unlikely friendship evolves