Thursday, February 19, 2009

Covering Municipal Politics

As this blog was "launched" almost exactly one year ago, I still haven't written much about Lowell's municipal political races, as they occur in the odd-numbered years only.

This being 2009, however, I'm definitely looking forward to soaking everything in -- the candidates, the issues, the races, the strategies, etc. and writing about it here. As a Political Science student who loves this stuff from a pure observer's angle, I can't wait to see it all up close -- trust me, I can say with no exaggeration that Richard Ben Cramer's "What It Takes" had me on the edge of my seat from front to back. Also, as someone who would love to jump into the fray at some point (though I'm not sure quite when, or how, or on what level), it'll be great to watch everything go by with the proverbial bat on my shoulder -- both for curiosity's sake and to help answer the could-I-ever-really-do-something-like-this question -- I'm still not sure whether I'd be better suited as a guy who tries to run for something, as a guy who advises the guy who tries to run for something, or as a guy who gets appointed to run something by the guy who successfully runs for something. All I know for sure is that I want to be involved -- I can't help it, I'm just way too interested in what goes on around me to stay on the sidelines forever.

Well, with proper kudos to Left in Lowell as the place I grabbed this from, I noticed today that a challenger had announced already: Ryan Berard. You can check out his website at this url: www.ryanberard.com. A lot of basic bio information is there -- suffice to say, he'll almost certainly be the youngest candidate on either the Council or School Board slates, as he'll turn 20 in April. There's not a ton of substantive policy stuff, but judging from his Left in Lowell post, the website is still a work in progress.

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