Vote your conscience for New Albany City Clerk, as both candidates are excellent.

To be perfectly honest, I've agonized over the question of an endorsement for the city clerk's race.

The incumbent Vicki Glotzbach (D) has been unfailingly courteous and professional since she became city clerk in 2012. Prior to her two terms in office, she was a deputy city clerk. Obviously experience favors her.

However I greatly admire challenger Kelly Feiock (R) for her relentlessly fact-based involvement with the Mt. Tabor Road Project resistance movement. It's very important for all seats to be contested, and she's a powerhouse activist and a solid candidate -- and the only candidate to whom I've personally donated.

At the grassroots level, I tend to believe two terms in office are enough. Then again, the office of city clerk has yet to be overtly politicized.

The major imperative in this year's municipal election is to drive a garlic-lubed stake through the heart of the Democratic Party's pay-to-play political patronage machine, but I can't make the case that the city clerk's race is central to this civic necessity.

So there. I'm stymied. Glotzbach or Feiock; vote your conscience, and I'll vote mine.

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Endorsement Compendium:

• Vote Stefanie Griffith for New Albany City Council District 1.
• Vote Scott Stewart for New Albany City Council District 2.
• Vote for Thunder the Wonder Ferret as a write-in for New Albany City Council District 3.
• Vote Cisa Kubley for New Albany City Council District 4.
• Vote Josh "JT" Turner for New Albany City Council District 5.
• Vote Scott Blair for New Albany City Council District 6.
• Vote Al Knable and Christina Estill for New Albany City Council At-Large.
• Vote your conscience for New Albany City Clerk, as both candidates are excellent.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Are NA's dwindling Democrats seeking to wrest control of city elections from the county? Lame, but at least they're not suggesting HWC Engineering do it.

When the Green Mouse drained his double well Scotch in one gulp, I knew something was on his mind.

"I keep saying that Gahanism can't possibly get any weirder, or the Floyd County Democrats any more panic-stricken, and I keep waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, hearing Rod Serling's voice."

"What's he saying to you, Mouse?"

"It goes something like this: 'New Albany is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Gahan Zone.' "

"That's purely terrifying."

"Horrible! You know, I need a little break from Dickey World. Someone told me Saudi Arabia's great around Christmas. Wanna go check it out?"

"Nah, think not. At this point I'm paranoid about leaving the elevator on the third floor."

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Eventually the Green Mouse settled down and passed along the latest morsel from the rumorama -- and he wasn't joking when it comes to weirdness, panic and Democrats coming undone.

The rumor goes something like this: With the Democratic Party's hold on local power having dwindled to the mayor, four council lackeys (five if you count Neville Barksdale) and the city clerk, with the 2019 municipal election cycle fast approaching, and with His Gahanic Majesty's system of fruit-basket-laden political patronage threatened with an entirely unexpected loot-by date, the party's zany elders have resolved a protocol to shift the authority for conducting local elections from the county clerk to city clerk.

I know; the idea is nutzoid, and maybe we can chalk it up to a steady diet of Rice Krispies Treats and Kool-Aid, but then again, the Democrats are donkeys on the edge. They're hanging by a thread in the normally secure urban stronghold, and the party's about to lose control of the county clerk's office, which runs elections.

On November 6, Danita Burks, a Republican, defeated Christy Eurton, the Democrat. Vicki Glotzbach (D) is city clerk; she's up for re-election in 2019, and may not even be aware of the brain bland trust's scheming over Bud Light Lime Pomegranate-A-Ritas at the Roadhouse.

The state of Indiana has this to say about it:

County:

Indiana’s local government includes election administration and voter registration offices in each of the state’s 92 counties. Each county is divided into election precincts, with a total of more than 5,000 precincts in Indiana. All 92 counties have a circuit court clerk elected by the voters and a county election board, which includes the circuit court clerk, to administer local elections.

According to IC 3-5-3-1 the counties and municipalities are responsible for the payment of election expenses including “expenses of voter registration and for all election supplies, equipment and expenses out of the county treasury in the manner provided by law.”

County Clerk, County Board of Registration and County Board of Elections can be found on the Secretary of State’s website, www.sos.in.gov/elections.

The exact formula for the alchemy by which our increasingly intemperate municipal Democrats might secede from their firmly Republican state's own election rule book remains obscure.

Can anyone remember a time when city Democrats maligned the management skills of a county clerk when the latter was a Democrat?

Are Democrats implying that clerk-elect Burks is dishonest when she's yet to be sworn in?

And, if so, isn't the Political Hypocrisy Meter sounding furiously given the self-contradictory chicanery foisted by municipal Democrats on John and Jane Q. Public at every turn?

Speaking personally, this rumor is far-fetched even by New Gahanian standards. Still, the hell of it is that is sounds precisely like something the ruling elites might try to do.

Downtown parking permits (thumbs up) but waivers (thumbs down), says City Clerk.

Thoughts and discussion, anyone?

New Albany City Clerk disagrees with waiving outstanding tickets for downtown parking passes, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

City Clerk Marcey Wisman likes the idea of downtown parking permits in New Albany, but is opposed to waiving unpaid tickets for those who purchase a pass.

Wisman made her concerns known during Tuesday’s Board of Public Works and Safety meeting, reading aloud a letter she drafted questioning whether Mayor Doug England’s administration realizes the ramifications of waiving outstanding tickets.

“No one is ever happy about paying a parking ticket, but to change the rules to benefit a few makes it even more difficult to justify the need to pay to many others who receive them,” Wisman said.

Cat's in the cradle, and more endorsements preceding Tuesday's election.

At the very last moment, a write-in candidate has been certified by the state of Indiana’s election board, and he will oppose the incumbent 1st district councilman Dan Coffey in Tuesday’s race.

His name is Skittles, a feral cat found living beneath an illegally installed water heater in a West Endian rental property around the corner from Coffey’s house, and shown here enjoying a long overdue hot bath following his recruitment by desperate constituents.

According to Skittles, “I’ve seen first-hand what Coffey can do with plumbing, and let me tell you, even a wild animal knows better.”

He added, “Unlike Steve Price, I’m no lap cat.”

In response, the Wizard of Westside has angrily vowed to again tamper with as many ballots as it takes to turn back the unexpected feline challenge and retain iron control of the city’s poorest district, which Coffey has earnestly guided to ever greater depths of impoverishment since his election eight years ago.

Intriguingly, Tribune publisher John Tucker has reached a similar conclusion:

Unfortunately, because Coffey is unopposed (he won by literally a few votes during the primary) he’ll probably be back for four more years. But even so, if I were in his district I’d leave the ballot blank or write in my crazy Uncle Fred’s name rather than surrender to four more years of his type of leadership.

District 1: Vote Skittles as a write-in, and help clean the Wizard’s litter box.

While we’re at it, here are the senior editor’s remaining endorsements.

District 2: Bob Caesar (D)
Long-term, downtown businessman knows the score, will not require prompting from hidden radio wave electro-shock impulses to know which way to vote.

District 3: Brenda Scharlow (R)
Meaningful entrepreneurial experience easily trumps a lowest common denominator opponent. For more, go here, and note publisher Tucker's words:

Price and Coffey are of like mind and vote. They have made it their job to stop progress in New Albany, and in that respect, they do a very good job. Unlike Coffey, there is someone running against Price. Brenda Scharlow is running on the Republican ticket. I’ve never met Brenda Scharlow. I have read her platform and watched her talk at a debate. She seems a capable person. However, make no mistake, I would vote for her mostly because the incumbent has proven himself to be incapable of the job.

District 4: Pat McLaughlin (D)
Quietly does his homework and refuses to pander to blogs like mine.

District 5: Dick Bliss (R)
Absence of family ties to “The Gary” a massive plus.

District 6: Jeff Gahan (D)
I’m simply unwilling to hold one admittedly colossal misstep against him.

At-Large: John Gonder (D), Jack Messer (D), Kevin Zurschmeide (R)
If Skittles fails in his bid to unseat Coffey, he promises to run against superannuated Democratic at-large candidate Jim Hollis on a personal hygiene platform.

Mayor: Doug England (D)
Perpetually encumbered by baggage, but what England is best at doing is what New Albany needs right now. Fortunately, we’re not being called upon to elect a saint, but to choose a mayor. Opponent Randy Hubbard has failed to offer compelling evidence that he possesses the energy or vision to succeed as mayor. For more, go here.

Clerk: Marcey Wisman (D)
Modernizing the office would be an easier job if so many of the purse string holders weren’t clueless Luddites busking for nickels and dimes on street corners.

See also:

Tasty fried fish since 1985 ... and by the way, vote for me.

Not an endorsement, but rather an embarrassment.