Tuesday, September 27, is primary election day in Campbell.
The race is being held to narrow the field of mayoral candidates from three to two. The two receiving the most votes will be in the November general election.
Question
Is it time for the City of Youngstown to adopt this form of nonpartisan primary election?
??? Why after 215 years would you want to change now? ;D
One reason to change is that our city no longer has two political parties. The republicans abandoned Youngstown a long time ago. For example, there is only one person running as a republican in the November general election ward races in Youngstown.
That's true, so in a sense local elections are nonpartisan, but I see what you mean, but would that encourage Republicans run for office? Unless I'm mistaken, the last time Youngstown Republicans made any kind of showing in a significant way was when Nixon was running against Kennedy in 1960.
A lot of the blame for people not wanting to run as Republicans is because the Party won't help them financially until they win the primary, and most local people don't have the means to finance their own campaign, paying for campaign literature, radio and television and newspaper ads, yard signs and the like.
You speak as though a Republican could actually get elected in Youngstown.......
The last Republican that drew votes city wide was Jack Hunter.
There was a time a few decades ago when several republicans served on Youngstown city council at the same time. As I suggested earlier, that republican base moved to the suburbs over the years. What we have now is a lot of democrats, a group of independents, and a small group of republican voters.
A nonpartisan election would remove party labels. All candidates would run in the primary on their own merits. All voters would participate in the primary. The two candidates receiving the most votes in a race would move on to the fall general election.
I might agree that removing party labels might help but still you need money to run a proper campaign to pay for radio, television and newspaper ads as well as yard signs, and that is the rub. Getting your name out there doesn't come cheap.
There's only so many times talk radio will give a candidate air time even if the candidates got on all the local talk shows, and since the candidates would be running for council seats, the best that they could expect, especially on WKBN is 15 minutes.
Radio debates on WKBN with all the candidates would be ideal because one of the TV stations would be sure to be there, but this could only be effective if there were two candidates for each ward.
Unfortunately radio stations don't usually cover Council races so it would be a big challenge.
As for the Louie Free Show, his listener base is too small to be really effective. It can't compete with the WKBN programs.