Ruby Sinreich's blog

Keep your eyes on the Board of Elections website starting at noon today. Since there are a number of candidates that have already declared to the media, I expect them to come out strong and try to scare off potential competitors quickly. It will be interesting to see in which districts some of them choose to run, especially incumbent Valerie Foushee.

I am going to be very busy with work (again, ug) so please post any new additions to that page in the comments here. Links to candidate websites are especially appreciated. :-)

Philip Duchastel has a searing column about Carolina North in yesterday's Chapel Hill News. I think he raises some good points, although he also seems to look at the issue as if no conversation or process has come before. I certainly don't agree when he says that "all assume building Carolina North is good." And I also wish he would propose some kind of better way forward instaed of just predicting Chapel Hill's doom.

...the big questions have gone unspoken. The behemoth of those is growth. It seems assumed by all that growth is desirable, and of course that growth is possible. I beg to differ.

I've had several people contact me and ask for a post about the final 2007 campaign finance figures. (And yet none of them offerred to write it themselves, hmmm.) The results are pretty interesting. The Independent Weekly wrote a summary including Chapel Hill.

He placed fourth in the race, but first in cash: Council challenger Matt Czajkowski spent at least $20,000 in the election cycle—more than fellow candidates Sally Greene, Cam Hill and Bill Strom combined. Ninety percent came from Czajkowski's own pocket, via $17,750 in self-loans.

Czajkowski came in fourth in the seven-person race for four seats, squeaking by incumbent Hill by 63 votes.

In total, Strom raised $9,380 and spent $6,497; Greene raised $7,881 and spent $5,669; and Hill raised $5,485 and spent $5,566 (he had cash on hand from his 2003 race). Top vote-getter and incumbent Jim Ward, who pledged not to spend more than $3,000, had not submitted a final report as of Jan. 29.