Remember when everyone made fun of the California gubernatorial recall in 2003 — 135 candidates, from a sumo wrestler to a producer for Dharma and Greg to porn impresario Larry Flynt? Well, it isn’t that bad here yet, but May’s mayoral election already has 20 candidates, and the filing deadline isn’t until March 12.
The complete list is here (place 15 is the mayor’s spot), and there is even a list of candidates with web sites, though many of the most intriguing candidates don’t have one. And none of this includes Jim Buerger, who told Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper last week that he was going to run. Is 21 enough? Can we go higher? There are still a bunch of people who usually run or who have run or who could run who haven’t declared yet.
Here’s something else to ponder, assuming my math is any good. Figure around 120,000 people will vote in May (the average for the last three elections). Figure half the candidates get 10 percent of the votes, or 12,000. That leaves the other 10 to split 108,000. This means that someone with less than 20 percent of the vote can make the runoff without too much trouble. Now that’s going to be fun to watch.
