Some interesting races will be on the ballot in May

With the election coming up in May, a few times over the last couple of months, I gave serious thought to writing a column with the headline, “I’d like to take this opportunity to announce my candidacy for…”, and then conclude the column with “my candidacy for nothing. I haven’t lost enough senses to run for office.”

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

I didn’t do it, but it would have been fun to see people’s reactions.

Barring the Kentucky General Assembly monkeying with the election filing deadline – again – it looks like the final battle lines have been set for the upcoming May Primary election.

I say looks like because it’s possible the May Primary could turn into an August Primary election depending on what happens with a legal challenge over legislative redistricting and a proposed bill currently in the Kentucky General Assembly.

Here are some thoughts on some of our more interesting election match-ups for the May Primary some of which I have no clue how they will turn out.

• The sheriff’s race is going to be an interesting one with six candidates, including: former Jailer Ken Mobley, Constable Jim Thornton, current Chief Deputy Tim Baker, retired Kentucky State Police Lt. Bill Elliotte and retired KSP Trooper Scott Bunch. Both Elliotte and Bunch are now school resource officers. B.J. Leach is also running for sheriff.

There are lots of candidates with law enforcement experience here. Should be interesting.

• The jailer’s race features seven candidates over half of whom currently work at the detention center. The biggest thing that surprises me here is that there aren’t more candidates in this race.

The last time we had a jailer’s race with no incumbent running, we had candidates numbering in the double digits.

Pretty much anything could happen in this race. This one should be really interesting.

• 82^nd Rep. Regina Huff isn’t seeking re-election, and has endorsed Whitley County’s favorite Survivor winner Nick Wilson for the job. Without a doubt Wilson has widespread name recognition and is a smart and really likable guy.

The surprising thing to me in this race is that Wilson didn’t draw any challengers in the Republican Primary. Politically speaking, Wilson’s lone weakness would seem to be a lack of experience. He has never held or run for political office before.

Barring a scandal or some big controversy, I think Wilson will be extremely difficult to beat in a local race after he serves one or two terms in office.

In other words, any local Republicans with eyes on becoming state representative, might have missed their best chance to beat Wilson.

Let me shift gears before I conclude this column and congratulate the staff of the News Journal on our first place general excellence win in the large weekly newspaper category of the Kentucky Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. Jennifer Perkins, Dean Manning and former News Journal staffer Trevor Sherman all brought home awards in addition to a few that I won myself.

We have a really hard working staff here at the paper, who do a great job every week putting in lots of hours and cranking out a quality newspaper each week for our loyal readers. I thank them for their efforts.