The filing date for local city council races has passed, creating clarity and some surprises around what the upcoming Council ballots will look like.
Excelsior will, for the first time in recent memory, have an uncontested election for Mayor and the two Council seats. Nick Ruehl is the lone mayoral candidate. Greg Miller and Mary Jo Fulkerson are running for the two open Council seats. This is a major change from the past two (at least) elections, when multiple candidates ran in what ended up to be very close elections.
Paula Skrede is the lone candidate for Deephaven Mayor, while Keith Kask and John Wheaton are running for the two open Council seats.
Greenwood will have some contests in November. Deb Kind and Bob Quam are running for Mayor, and William Rose, Kelsey Page, and Lake Bechtell will vie for two 4-year Council terms. Tom Fletcher will run unopposed for the two year term.
In Shorewood, Dick Woodruff, Bob Edmundson, and Scott Zerby will run for the two open Council seats in the newly reformatted at-large system. Chris Lizee will be the lone Mayoral candidate.
William Labelle is the lone Mayoral candidate in Tonka Bay, while Gerry De La Vega and Anthony Marceau are running for the two open Council seats.
There you have it -- 18 people running for 15 open seats. A big departure from two years ago when, with the SLMPD funding issue looming, the seats were much more hotly contested.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Filing Period Closes: City Council Ballots Emerge
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Your numbers are off. There are more than 15 open seats in the five cities, and your list names more than 18 candidates, if I counted correctly. Or maybe I'm just confused by your tabulations.
ReplyDeleteThere are uncontested races for the mayoral seats and two city council seats in three cities: Deephaven, Excelsior and Tonka Bay. This is the first time in at least 10 years the mayoral or council seats are uncontested in Excelsior. Relying upon my ever-failing memory, Excelsior has had contested mayoral and council elections dating back to 1998, the first election I covered.
Tonka Bay is never a hotbed of local election activity. Deephaven has had ridiculous elections. Perhaps it was four years ago when there were a truckload of council candidates (11) for two seats and four mayoral candidates. Feast or famine.
As for Greenwood, there are four seats on the ballot thanks to the vacancy that needs to be filled, and will be by Tom Fletcher, barring a write-in campaign.
And your Shorewood list fails to include four candidates for the pair of two-year seats that are up for election thanks to the ward-free makeover of the city.
So by my count that's 23 candidates for 18 seats.