The race for Eden Prairie mayor starts to heat up this week with the League of Women Voters "debate." It's not a true debate, but it will be one of the very few opportunities for candidates to try to distinguish themselves. The problem, of course, is that you'll also have six city council candidates at the same forum; so 8 people trying to divide up 1.5 hours.
I appreciate that the LWV puts on these events. But, in honesty they should call themselves the League of Liberal Women Voters as it is clear that liberals dominate this group. This is important at the debate primarily because you'll have a LWV member screening the audience questions--that's a lot of power to have and pretty much guarantees that any questions about taxation won't be asked.
Recently, the LWV has always permitted the question "should party endorsements be a part of local elections," so all the GOP candidates should be ready for that question. I reject the notion that party endorsements should be any less useful to voters that newspaper endorsements or former elected official endorsements. In fact, I suggest that party endorsements are far more relevant to voters as voters will have a much clearer idea of what a party endorsement means than, for example, an endorsement by the local paper. Knowing nothing more, a strong liberal will likely shy away from someone holding a GOP endorsement; but, they likely will have no real idea why the local paper endorsed a candidate.
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