Op-Ed Columns

Slowly, with all deliberate speed, the names are trickling in.

Chip Howell's in.

Leon Smith's in, for the seventh consecutive time.

Greg Thrower's in.

Marcus Dunn's in.

Ben Little's in — for another possible term on the Anniston City Council, not for a first term as Anniston's mayor, as so many thought would be the case. So much for informed predictions.

David Dawson's in.

John Spain's in.

Gene Robinson, downtown Anniston's biggest fan, is in.

And so are a host of others — some for City Council seats, some for local school boards slots — in cities all across northeast Alabama.

After a winter and spring of talk and discussion, after weeks of wondering who would run for which seats, after Little offered us some public titillation by considering a campaign to unseat the entrenched, two-termer Howell, election time finally is here.

Candidates are announcing, filing papers, putting up yard signs, making afternoon house calls to ask for votes. Late August can't get here soon enough.

Yes, finally.

These are the types of elections that I enjoy — local ballots, with local candidates, fueled by local issues. Gas prices and a sagging economy and the troops in Iraq are on the forefront of our national palate, but what, mayor and councilmen, are you going to do about recruiting industry and reducing crime in my neighborhood?

Say what you want about national elections — they're undeniably critical and historic — but have you ever met a presidential candidate? Face to face, on the streets of your city, without the intrusion of the Secret Service or the press corps?

How often do you get a chance to take your House complaint to the Speaker, and have her listen? When's the last time you saw either of Alabama's senators grabbing a sandwich at a Quintard drive-through or dropping a few bucks at the Oxford Exchange?

These are grassroots, community elections; it's politics at the most basic, most intrinsic level. It has little — if any — of the sex appeal of Barack and John and Hillary and Bill, and none of the media-generated, CNN-style buzz. But people intimately care about the victors and the losers, and equally so about how the elections are conducted.

If you don't think that's the case, just ask Ray Bryan or Mannon Bankson.

On second thought, wait a while before you do that.

What will be so intriguing about the next seven weeks of politickin' and door-to-door stumpin' is the reality that change is advancing on Calhoun County's political scene. How much? In what manner? To which seats? To which boards? Will it be widespread or sporadic?

Or will it be more of the same, with the same faces and the same frustrations?

We'll see on Aug. 26.

But what's clearly seen today is that there are enough current politicians who will not be politicians this fall. That fact will ensure that, in Anniston and Oxford, at least, fresh faces with unheard agendas — and, we all hope, more than a handful of progressive ideas — will be elected.

Remember: Jeff Fink, Anniston city councilman, isn't running for re-election. Thrower, Oxford city councilman, isn't running for re-election of that seat. (Which, obviously, means he's out of Oxford politics for the coming term if he loses his mayoral bid.) Boice Turner, Oxford city councilman, isn't seeking another term. Other such examples in Calhoun County's towns may soon exist.

Here's what could happen: At least one prominent Calhoun County mayor is unseated, and a host of new faces dot the councils and school boards in Anniston and Oxford. Gosh knows what would happen then, but at the very least it would signal a new era in county leadership, a progressive time in which leaders listen and residents feel less frustration about those in charge of their towns.

Or, here's what may happen: Incumbent mayors are re-elected, and in most cases only the council and board seats without incumbents on the ballot see any alterations. Change, to steal Barack Obama's catchphrase, is minimal. And the next four years seem eerily familiar to the four we're about to complete.

So much for optimism.

For now, we're stuck with what we have — the warmup to this captivating political game, a preamble to the big day in late August. Each week we learn who's in, and who's out.

For now, that'll have to do.