Somerville preliminary mayoral election, Tuesday 9/19

[ron_newman]

The city of Somerville will hold a preliminary election on Tuesday, September 19, because three candidates are running for Mayor. The preliminary election will eliminate the candidate with the lowest vote, with the remaining two facing off in the November 7 general election. The candidates:

• Payton Corbett (campaign website | Facebook page)
• Mayor Joe Curtatone (official city page | campaign website | Facebook page)
• Kenneth Van Buskirk -- if this person has a campaign website, a Facebook page, or really any campaign at all, I haven't been able to locate it. Please comment if you know anything at all about him.

There is also a preliminary election on September 19 for Ward 1 School Committee, because three candidates are running for an open seat there: Emily Ackman, Guillermo Hamlin, and Ken Salvato. I know nothing about this race; if you do, please add a comment here. All other School Committee races and all Alderman races (both at-large and ward) will take place on November 7.

Somerville Local First will hold a candidates' meet & greet event on Tuesday, September 12, 6-9 pm, at Workbar, 31 Union Square.

Somerville Candidate Video Profiles on SCATV

Videos from Somerville Labor Coalition candidate forum on June 27

All comment is welcome here!

Comments

[redbird]

For the moment I am following Naomi Kritzer's guideline (from her blogging on Minneapolis elections) that thewe days, if someone doesn't have any sort of campaign website, they may have filed papers but they actually aren't running for office. There may be spaces on the ballot that are closer to "oh good, someone wants the job"—Naomi started election blogging because she was looking for any information at all about candidates for seats on the Soil and Water Commission (it's a thing there)—at which point you might google to make sure the person isn't known to be supporting Satan or serving time for assault, but otherwise vote for them so the commission will at least have a quorum. But we have two actual candidates for mayor here.

[ron_newman]

Just because I'm not aware of this perrson's campaign doesn't mean he doesn't have one, as I haven't been totally plugged into local politics of late. I'm hoping others can supply any information that I am missing.