There were several extremely funny moments. My favorite was when one of the two 25-year-old candidates for city council said that for dealing with the growing traffic problems it was time to consider flying cars, since "it's the 21st century after all."
The two young ones have been crossed off my list (for having half- or quarter-baked ideas at best), as was the only explicitly anti-union one and the techno-nerd. (Because this is an aerospace and oil-refining town, there are lots of engineers.) Beyond that, it's going to be hard to decide who to vote for (or if it's worth voting in a local election).
The two sides in the debate (that I can see) are the homeowners and the developers (just as in Mike Davis' CITY OF QUARTZ). The developers want to have a lot more condos in town, without dealing with the costs to the town of traffic and the like. On the other hand, the homeowners are most interested in maintaining or raising property values and tend to be NIMBYites. A choice between two evils?
Perhaps the way out is to imagine that the best possible situation (given the dominance of capitalism in a town election, etc.) is a _balance_ between the developers and the homeowners. Because the developers are currently in the saddle, with an odor of corruption, at this point I'm thinking of voting for the homeowners -- simply to right the balance.
But I'm willing to change my mind. -- Jim Devine / "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." -- John Kenneth Galbraith.