Political Gumbo: Election Matters

The deadline to turn in papers to run for City Council in the June election is fast approaching.

Residents in district 3 and 5 have until Friday, March 11 at 5 p.m. to return nominating papers to the city clerk’s office.

Perspective candidates must collect 25 signatures in the district and pay $25.

That deadline will be extended in District 7 until March 16 because the incumbent is not running.

According to the city’s election website, if the incumbent does not file papers by the deadline, the period is extended by five days.

Council seats in district 3, 5 and 7 will be contested in June.

Vice Mayor Andy Wilson, who represents District 7, has already announced he has no plans to re-election.

Jason Lyon, Ciran Hadjian and Allen Shay have pulled papers to qualify for the election in that district.

So far only two candidates, incumbents John Kennedy and Jess Rivas, have qualified for the election.

In District 3 Brandon Lamar pulled papers to run against Kennedy.

Rivas is unopposed in District 5.

Remember when some locals claimed more people would run for office if we had campaign limits, well as of now that’s not the case.

More people ran in the last election for districts 3, 5 and 7.

Nine people ran last time, including District 3 Incumbent John Kennedy, who ran unopposed, District 5 Incumbent Victor Gordo squared off against Krystal Lopez Padley and Aida Morales in District 5 and in District 7 Andy Wilson, who was appointed to the seat after Mayor Terry Tornek gave it up for the mayor’s gavel, faced Bryan Witt, Phil Hosp, Alejandro Menchacha and Sheena Tahilramani.

This time six people are running for the same seats with Jess Rivas running unopposed.

In January, a state law kicked in limiting campaign donations to $4,900.

At the time some people claimed it was necessary to even the playing field and convince more people to seek office.

Kennedy has outraised everyone combined as of last month followed by Jason Lyon in District 7 and Rivas in District 5.

What was the point of all of this again — oh yeah people said they wanted to get corruption out of local politics.

Of course they could not point to who was corrupt or any corrupt acts.

The lesson here, locals will always participate in the political process in droves and dig deep to support their candidates, especially incumbents.

Thanks for all the links to videos on YouTube last week in response to the “Dragnet” clip. I’m sticking with my choice.

No action items during Monday’s City Council meeting.

One of the big items on this Monday’s agenda figures to be the public hearing on increased water rates.