As most Ogden City Council candidates know, I've been dialing out since the Ogden City filing deadline, to recruit all non-incumbent candidates to contribute campaign information to Weber County Forum.
Against my better judgment (because it entails a lot of work), I've decided to provide separate web pages to each and every candidate (including any incumbent) who's running for an Ogden City Council seat, right here on this blog.
I've spoken to most of the contenders; and most of them have agreed to participate here. There are one or two who don't even have an email address. To those people, I just say "good luck." Not having an email address is the pretty much the same thing as not having a telephone in the early part of the twenty-first-century, I think.
I've sent out an email to all the council candidates whose email addys I've been able to identify up through today. If you know of a council candidate whom you support, and I may have left out... please tell him/her about this invitation. Believe me... I've been tryin'...
What I'll be looking for is an initial "campaign statement," i.e, Why you're running for a council seat. Biographical info will be helpful too, as well as anything else that belongs in an initial campaign brochure.
A little bit later I'll be submitting a campaign questionare, asking where each candidate stands on the important Ogden City issues.
I'm planning to set up individual web pages, and get the whole thing rolling around Saturday, September 3.
Submit your info, people. For those candidates who don't have their own website, it'll give you "web presence."
For those who are a little more web-sophisticated, I'll be happy to link your campaign website from your own blogger.com page.
The whole purpose of this is to get the word out for your candidacy, people. Experience dictates that the Standard-Examimer won't even seriously report that there's a municipal election going on...until after the primary race is over.
Submit your stuff to Weber County Forum email
Update 8/27/05 3:46 p.m. M/T.: One good way to provide your campaign statements, folks, is to include your text within your return email via "rich text" format. The next best manner of submission is to include "rich formatted" text files as attachments. Although my own software can read at least eight different versions of "MS word format," I've already run into a situation where one candidate's info is unreadable because of its oddball Microsoft formatting.
The second-easiest way to submit your text is in pure "text" (ascii) format. If you have graphics or images you'd like to include, please send your image files separately via "attachments." Once your data has been submitted, I'll send you sample "proofs" before I publish next Saturday.
If your word processor has the ability to save your file in "html," (Hyper Text Markup Language,) that's the easiest and best of all. That way I can just copy and paste all your data to your own WCF webpage, embedded graphics images and all.
This is what I meant when I said that doing this is a "pain in the keister." Most word-processing programs don't translate directly to HTML web-format. Some "word processor output can't even be read, in spite of the fact that I have robust sofware that can read many of the "tower of babel" word-processor versions that many people use.
Thanks for your patience, candidates. It'll all be worth the trouble once your statements are submitted and posted, I'm sure.