This election is for the local district city council seats whereby you get to vote for only the candidate who lives in your district and the winning candidate will only be elected by the people of that same district where he lives. The other two races, though very important - will not be decided by the people who live outside that district. This race is as local as you can get and the key to winning is turnout, especially where there are three candidates in the race.
A known election tactic is to have a group actually run two candidates where there is a third "possibly stronger" candidate so that the vote is split three ways forcing a runoff between the two who received the highest number of votes. This tacit is counting on a very low run off election whereby it is almost perceived to be just a vote between the friends and family of the two candidates and little more.
There was a minor redistricting in 2010 because of the census but here are the 2008 election results which had all three of the local races participating. You can see minor differences in the voting totals between districts 1, 2 & 3 even though the population was pretty equal and those turnout numbers will be very important to the candidates running. I am guessing there are a lot of neighborhood walking tours going on whereby the candidates have lists on which houses vote on a regular basis and even which way they lean. If you are a regular voter, I am guessing your doorbell will be a ringing.
In past elections I have offered to post candidate election announcements and will happily do so again for this election if contacted directly by the candidate and provided positive information to post. I have already done this for Councilman Doug Thompson & Mayor Pro Tem Denny Shortal when they announced their reelection bid. As the two incumbents running for reelection they have been regular fixtures on this blog and should be well known by many in the community. I also posted an announcement for District two candidate, Hayward Wescott when he announced but haven't been contacted by, nor know, the other candidates. None the less, the offer to post stands.
I conducted a very basic internet search on each of the candidates and linked the candidates names below with what seems to be their main campaign website. Nothing was found for David Davis in District 1 nor for William A.J. Mercier in District 2, but I will happily post when available. I then searched for each of the candidates filings with the State Ethics Commission and posted the link on the home address to the page where each candidates campaign contributions will be listed (due by October 7th).
Finally I searched for the candidates personal financial disclosures by city and then by name as one candidate is using a PO Box out of Atlanta. The documents are now due to be filed and some seem to be missing from the website, some were filed electronically and are viewable on line and others were filed in person or via a paper version which makes it more difficult to view but the records are available by a simple request.
Please determine what district you live in so that you can hone your candidate research down to the contest that matters to you.
City Council, District 1, Post 1
770-986-7880 (W)
404-992-5117 (H)
404-992-5777 (W)
770-396-7479 (H)
Denis Shortal (I)
770-395-9704
City Council, District 2, Post 2
William A.J. Mercier
404-714-5156 (W)
678-395-3933 (H)
404-271-9554 (W)
770-393-9554 (H)
404-853-5000 (W)
404-395-5565 (H)
City Council, District 3, Post 3
678-935-1001 (W)
404-664-6553 (H)
Doug Thompson (I)
770-396-3661 (W)
770-393-8015 (H)
