Whitewater will see two contested Council races this year, for a district and an at-large seat. The at-large race will assure the city at least one new Council member from the two candidates; the district race has one incumbent and one challenger. (The school district has no contested races.)
If our laws were less burdensome, we’d have more candidates. I understand that these regulations are meant to assure ‘serious,’ candidates, but that’s the very problem: rather than let voters decide who’s serious in their own eyes, the law winnows presumptively.
There’s a lack of confidence in popular sovereignty that infuses fussy regulations. If this involved the work of engineering a spacecraft, one would understand the attention to minute detail – every millimeter counts. Election laws are nothing like aerospace engineering; campaign requirements for local office are unnecessarily demanding.
Along these lines, see How to Keep Roma or Bedouin from Dominating Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Politics.
There are lots of good questions about policy in Whitewater, and questions one could pose to these candidates. There may be an opportunity to pose them at one public forum or another.
This will be a busy year, and events elsewhere are sure to demand notice. Yet, it would be a shame if these races were ignored, and forgotten for Wisconsin recalls and federal senate and presidential races.
There’s time enough to think about both.