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Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Local elections do mater

From

It is city election time and the news media has given it very little notice. They are predicting a 9 percent turnout. There are candidates and some of them have issues, but we wouldn’t really notice that if we watch or read the news.
I’ve seen no campaign signs yet and the only TV commercial was about a candidate who wanted us to know his name. He said nothing else and showed us pictures of his yard signs.
Today is the primary. After today, the field will be limited to two candidates per district and two for mayor.
There are six men challenging Mayor Carl Brewer. Of them, The Wichita Eagle has written most of them off as losers since they don’t have name recognition. I’m sure The Eagle has also determined they don’t plan to spend as much money on advertising. They're Roy Malcom, Paul Rhodes and Scott Thode. The other three have also been discounted Darrell Leffew and Marty Mork. That is because they ran before and didn’t win the primary.
The Eagle figures a person can’t be taken seriously without spending at least 100,000. According to The Wichita Eagle article said They did ask each man three questions in their article Six men on ballot in primary for Wichita mayor;
1. What are your top three priorities for the city, and how would you accomplish them?
2. Explain why you do or do not support the proposed trash hauling cooperative. What do you think could improve it?
3. Name someone who is relatively famous, whom you admire.
The answers were the familiar “create jobs, reduce regulations.” In this state, that is to be predicted. That has been about the extent of this races coverage. That includes TV stations also.
It is almost as if the city holds secret elections. Yet these elections are really the most important part of democracy because people have more control of things at the local level than such offices as president, where they have almost no control.

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