candiates

In spite of the Orange County Board of Elections best attempts to stop anyone from doing this (see original PDF) I have copied the list of candiates and reformatted it into a vaguely readable list. If possible I will clean this up in a few days.

Most of these candidates will be joining us at our annual Candidate Coming Out Party today at 5:30 pm in downtown Chapel Hill, and I hope you will join us too. See all the details and RSVP on Facebook.

The Chapel Hill Town Council race will be where the party is. There are 10 candiates running for four seats, and only two incumbents.I expect the challengers have some pretty smart and interesting things to say, and some of them even have experience with local issues. For some voters, there are will be hard decisions, for some there will be clear favorites.

It's also very interesting that both our incumbent Hillsborough and Chapel Hill mayors and the unofficially-annointed challenger in Carrboro will all be running unopposed. When Lydia Lavelle takes office in December, I belive that we might be the only county in the nation with two openly-gay mayors! (Can someone fact-check me on that?)

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board, Carrboro Board of Aldermen, and Hillsborough Board of Town Commissioners also mustered more candidates than seats so there will be competitive races there.

It's that time of year, and the "vote for me" signs are sprouting like weeds. (Very much like, and in close proximity to, the weeds that have taken over the flowerbeds on the bypass, those desperate looking things planted a few years ago for the Special Olympics and abandoned since. Ah, when we were pretty.)Our own batty uncle Lee Pavão recently got on WCHL to propose a conspiracy theory involving the strategic placement of certain people's signs next to one another and how this plot reveals the stink of brimstone in the dark heart of certain local politicians and on and on etc etc. I'll let Pavão search out the political meaning revealed in the proximity of inanimate bodies in space. I'm more interested in the vocabulary of our local signage.You can't begin to get into the question, at least not these days, without acknowledging that Council Member Jim Ward is the undisputed and reigning champion in the battle of the election signs.