In District 1, considering that Democrat Charlie Gerdes took home a clear majority (52 percent) in a three-way primary in late August against Josh Shulman and Republican former Council member Bob Kersteen, he is the considerable favorite, this time running just against Kersteen, with the entire citizenry eligible to vote (St. Pete's primary elections allow only those in the particular district to vote -- but races are open to the entire electorate on general election day).
District 7's fight in Midtown between Gershom Faulkner and incumbent Wengay Newton has had the most controversy, as both candidates have freely badmouthed each other in campaign forums and on the stump.
While in District 3, incumbent Bill Dudley faces a former student of his, Bubba the Love Sponge producer Brent Hatley.
Nationally, one of the biggest elections takes place in Ohio, where union members are working intensely for a referendum overturning the state’s new law denying union rights to public employees.
While in Mississippi, voters will be asked to define when human life begins, with a referendum on the ballot that will ask voters what exactly being a person means, at least on the state’s Bill of Rights.
If the new wording is added to the Bill of Rights, many routine medical surgeries, birth control methods and abortion would be outlawed across the southern state (and as the St. Pete Times Katie Sanders reports, there is an effort to have Floridians vote on this in 2014).
Also Russell Pearce, the Arizona state Senator who created that state's controversial SB 1070, the anti-illegal immigration measure, is up for a re-call election.
And there are mayoral races all across the country, including in Baltimore; Houston; Indianapolis; Phoenix; Philadelphia; Salt Lake City, and my hometown of San Francisco, where interim Mayor Ed Lee faces more than a dozen opponents in his bid to be elected by the citizenry there.
Lee was selected to replace the charismatic and progressive Gavin Newsom, elected the state's lieutenant governor last year. Lee was selected in part last January because he said he didn't intend to run for office in the fall, but like so many of us, changed his mind. If elected, he would become the first mayor of Chinese descent in a city that has a huge Chinese-American population.
San Francisco's election is an instant run-off vote, meaning that voters will rank, in order of preference, the various candidates for mayor.
Across the Bay in Oakland a year ago, such IRV balloting allowed the woman who did not come in first place on election night, Jean Quan, to become the winner (it took over a week for that to be determined). Quan, you may have seen, read or heard, has been in the news just a bit over the last month, as her decisions have been criticized by many in the Occupy Oakland drama.
