Sunday, May 04, 2008
Editorial: On Tuesday, it's your turn to vote
Local elections will help decide how your community is governed. Exercise your civic responsibility and vote.
From the RoundTable blog
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The nation's eyes will be on Indiana and North Carolina Tuesday when voters may help decide finally who the Democratic presidential nominee will be, but there are important elections, at least from a more local perspective, in Virginia as well.
Localities across the state will be electing school board members, city council members and mayors.
If you care about your community, this will be your chance to determine how it's governed at least for the next two years.
In the Roanoke and New River valleys, there are numerous competitive elections on Tuesday.
Whatever your concern -- over-development in Christiansburg, stagnation in Pulaski or open government in Roanoke -- there are reasons to vote in Tuesday's election, and good candidates to vote for, as well as a few candidates to vote against.
The Roanoke Times editorial board interviewed practically every candidate in all these races. We examined their records and debated who would do the best job.
It's a lengthy and time-consuming process, but we hope the endorsements that resulted prove valuable to our readers, even those who disagree with our decisions.
Here are our endorsements for Tuesday's elections. The RT, our editorial page blog, will include links to the full endorsements so you can study our reasoning and use these endorsements as they are intended: as one more tool to help you make up your own mind.
Roanoke Mayor
Nelson Harris
Roanoke City Council
Sherman Lea, Anita Price, Court Rosen
Salem City Council
Jane Johnson, Lisa Garst, Vicki Daulton
Vinton Town Council
Carolyn Fidler, W.W. "Wes" Nance.
Blacksburg Town Council
Don Langrehr, Paul Lancaster, Leslie Hager-Smith
Christiansburg Town Council
Michael Barber, Jim VanHoozier, Henry Showalter
Radford City Council
Dick Harshberger, Bob Nicholson
Radford School Board
Alvin Alexander, Bill Flora
Pulaski Mayor
Jeffrey Worrell
Pulaski Town Council
Joel Burchett, Morgan Welker, H.M. Kidd
