Scott Schwebke is apparently back from vacation and provides a 2009 Ogden City Council candidate story this morning, following up on the Trent Toone writeup which we discussed on Weber County Forum yesterday. Read Mr. Schwbke's full story here:
• Ogden council election draws 17Although it's partly a rehash of old news, Mr. Schwebke does cover some new ground, with some interesting speculation obtained from interviews with several Ogden political insiders, as to the possible reasons that 17 hopeful candidates have queued up to fill a mere 4 vacant council slots in the 2009 municipal election. At risk of oversimplification, here are the various theories in a nutshell:
Brandon Stephenson: The crowd of city council candidates in the upcoming election may be due to Ogden's burgeoning reputation as high-adventure mecca and progress under way at The Junction, a retail, residential and entertainment complex downtown, Stephenson said.Regardless of their rationales however, what's obvious is that these 17 candidates have set the stage for what ought to be an extremely interesting and lively municipal primary election run-up. Grab that popcorn and pull up your Barca-loungers, folks. It'll be exciting to watch the fur fly over the next two months, as these 17 candidates jockey for position in advance of the September 15, 2009 primary election.
"Lots of folks (running for office) want to see Ogden move forward," he said.
Jesse Garcia: "There could be some dissatisfaction," Garcia said. "Maybe they don't like what the administration is doing. Maybe they don't like what the council is doing."
Some of the candidates are veterans of municipal committees and may consider election to the city council as the next logical step in providing public service, Garcia speculated.
Cindi Mansell: City Recorder Cindi Mansell said the large number of candidates may be due to the decisions of city council members Dorrene Jeske and Blain Johnson not to seek re-election.
"People see those two seats as completely available," she said. "When an incumbent files, people may think because of name recognition that incumbents are apt to be re-elected, which may discourage some potential candidates."
We'll also again draw our readers' attention to our 2009 Council Candidate Roster, which is embedded in our right sidebar. While Mr. Schwebke was presumably busy interviewing local political pundits, we spent a good part of yesterday afternoon assembling the useful candidate information which was submitted by some of our alert readers under yesterday's WCF article. Thanks to to the assistance of our gentle readers (special thanks to Googleboy), our Council Roster has received a major update. At this point we now have basic contact information available for all 17 candidates, together with an early smattering of additional supplementary information to boot. There's still plenty of additional compilation to be done, of course. Consider this a work in progress.
So keep that info rolling in, gentle readers. We'd be especially interested in gathering candidate email contact information too. Individual candidates are of course invited to provide their own links and other data as well. With the help of all the citizens of Ogden City, it's our goal to be the most information-rich Ogden City 2009 municipal election source on the web... just as we've been in the past.
That's it for now, gentle readers.
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