Why so few candidates in Edmonds?

Published 3:37 pm Tuesday, November 3, 2015

When Edmonds voters voted on a mayor and five city council members on Tuesday ballots, they found that they had a choice for only three council positions, with the mayor and two incumbent council members unopposed.

During the August primary, they had no choice because no Edmonds position had the required three candidates to force a primary.

That’s a thin field compared to nearby Lynnwood, which had contests for all four positions on this year’s ballot, with primaries for two of the four.

For Edmonds, this was the first time since the year 2000 with more than one uncontested position and only the second time in the new century with even one candidate running unopposed.

This year, the city needed to fill four-year terms for mayor and four council positions, and also filled a two-year term for the position that former Councilman Strom Peterson gave up to take a position in the state legislature.

The nine candidates for six Edmonds positions this year compared to 12 candidates for five positions in the 2011 Edmonds elections and 10 for four council positions in this year’s Lynnwood elections.

Reasons for the reduced number of candidates are hard to explain, but Councilwoman Adrienne Fraley-Monillas, one of two Edmonds council members not on 2015 ballots, said last week that it might be because not enough people want to stick their necks out for the community.

“It’s a hard job, and to do it properly it takes 15 to 25 hours per week,” she said, adding that in the last two years she has seen much more criticism for every council decision.

She said that she isn’t sure why there should be an increased reluctance to run this year but speculated that more citizens have been watching and are afraid to be targets.