Monday, August 31, 2009

Municipal Qualifying 2009

One Capital Removed is coming to you live today from the ground floor of Milledgeville City Hall.
With help from the City of Milledgeville, we've set up shop across the hall from Municipal Elections Superintendent Patti Rushin's office in order to catch all the action for day one of 2009 municipal qualifying.
Starting today and continuing for the next four days, Milledgeville residents can throw their hat in the ring for the offices of Mayor, one of six open City Council seats and one of six open seats on the Georgia Military College Board of Trustees.
Qualifying ends abruptly at 4:30 p.m. Friday, and if last year's County Qualifying is any example, all the action will take place in the waning hours of candidate registration.
So check back as often as you'd like to see who's putting their money down early to get on the ballot for November 3rd's non-partisan election.


Update: Qualifying started off with a pop and a fizzle as a power outage killed the lights on the entire 100 Block of East Hancock Street in downtown Milledgeville this morning.
Lights went out at approximately 8:45 a.m. causing city employees to go into emergency mode. Everyone was accounted for, and the lights were back on within 45 minutes.
The interruption did not keep anyone from being the first to qualify Monday morning.

Update 2: Rev. Donald Hill was the first to candidate to qualify for municipal elections at approximately 11:30 a.m.
Hill, a former Alderman who served the third district for just over nine years, said that he wanted to qualify as soon as possible to get the gears in motion.
"The quicker people know who is running, the more able they are to look at the issues and know who can best represent them," he said.

Update 3: Jeanette Walden was the first Council incumbent to sign her name on the dotted line and qualify for the 2009 elections.
"I always come in [and qualify] on the first day," Walden said. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm a public servant, there's no strategy involved, I just enjoy serving the public and I love my district."
And that is District 2, in case you're wondering.

Updates 4 & 5: I took a short lunch break, but here's what's happened since the last few minutes before that and what's happened since.
A newcomer, Alan Wicker, a presiding elder in the AME church, qualified to run for the council seat in the first district.
"I'd like to see Milledgeville progress, and I'd like to be a catalyst in that process," he said.

One of the more widely speculated candidates in this year's municipal elections ended all the speculation and qualified today.
Phillip Joiner said that his experience as a student, resident and businessman give a good perspective with which to view public issues in the city.
"i am not running as a candidate for the college student, but I will not dismiss their input and opinions," he said. "As an alumnus and businessman, I have a good middle ground with which to understand both sides of any issue, and I have ideas to bring both sides together."

Update 6: The pace has quickened during the middle part of the day.
The first mayoral candidates has qualified.
Milledgeville Mayor Richard Bentley came in around 3:30 p.m. to qualify.
"As far as I'm concerned there's no need to wait," he said about qualifying on day one. "I'm prepared to continue serving the people and I want [to qualify] as soon as I can. I would've done it sooner, but the power was out."

Day 4

Update 7: Incumbents including Denese Shinholster, District 3; Richard "Boo" Mullins, District 5; and Steve Chambers, District 6, have filed their qualifying papers for municipal elections.
The only newcomer to the field, for the last three-day stretch, has been the entrance of John Alton in the fourth district race. For now his only opponent is Phillip Joiner. Expect this to be the race to watch as old and new Milledgeville clash in D4.

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