I’ll make a post later tonight that will either be about who the winner is, or which two candidates are going to the runoff. It’s been fun doing the hyperlocal coverage of the race. I’ve learned a lot of lessons and had a blast doing it. I’d strongly urge other Grand Strand Bloggers to sign up to do this on the next set of elections. I’d love to see people doing the same thing for the city of Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Surfside, Litchfield and any other incorporated town in the area. Bring the democracy, people!

Don’t forget, Conway residents, the mayoral debate is tomorrow, December 1st at 6:30 PM at Whittemore Park Middle School. The school is located on Wright Boulevard at Rhue Street. All the details I know are in the previous post.

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Thank you for accepting the invitation to participate in JR-12’s “city-wide” Town Hall Meeting-debate on December 1, 2008 at Whittemore Park Middle School. The school is located on Wright Boulevard at Rhue Street. The doors will open at 6 o’clock in the evening but the two-hour forum will not begin until 6:30.

In order for the forum to flow in a predictable order, respectfully, candidates’ opening and closing remarks should not to exceed five minutes. Pre-selected questions may be asked by the Moderator, Ms Tonya Brown, a general assignment reporter at WPDE TV; primarily, random questions from the audience will be encouraged. Each candidate may use the necessary time to respond directly to each question. Please remain mindful that if a candidate’s answer becomes repetitive, deviates from the question, or turns into a stump speech, a signal will be given indicating the candidate should cease speaking on that question immediately.

A set-aside period after the conclusion will give the candidates an opportunity to meet and greet the attending voters.

Based on JR-12’s past endeavors one should have very high expectations, yet, it is unpredictable how many will attend. This Town Hall Meeting-debate will be advertised as a “city-wide” event. Press releases will be sent to every news media that serve Conway. Nevertheless, each candidate should advertise this event, too, and invite their enthusiastic supporters. Banners and signs flaunted by demonstrating supporters are encouraged.

This event will be hosted by the leaders from the Jamestown, Racepath 1, and Racepath 2, precincts. These precincts united politically to form JR-12. The goal of this grassroots group is to empower the voters with truth and knowledge

Democratically,

Jim Neal,
Event Planner
(843) 248-6034

WBTW did a pair of stories about the Conway mayoral election. The first part covers Alys Lawson and Russ Calhoun and the second part covers Vivian Chestnut and Leslie McIver.

The Horry Independent ran a profile that has a snapshot of all four candidates.

I have yet to find campaign websites for three of the candidates. There is one for Leslie McIver but it appears to be from his previous mayoral run. If you find any, please send me a link to them.

For everyone out there willing to be a stringer, please send any tips or pointers along. You can either leave them in comments on any of the posts or you can email them to grandstrandbloggers@gmail.com . While everyone is still high on democracy and participation from the general election, let’s keep that spirit alive for our mayoral contest. It’s sad that we are even having it, but since we must let’s bring vigor and a high turnout to our lovely little town.

I’ll wait until after the general election on November 4th to really kick this in. People have more than enough to think about over the next eight days, but in that interim period I will do my best to give anyone interested in this election enough information to make their decision. I’ll post announcements about any campaign events by any of the four candidates that I find out about, etc.

As a reminder, anyone in the Grand Strand Blogroll can get an account to post here just by asking. If people would like to do hyper-local coverage of other parts of the Grand Strand, I’d love to see it. Do you want to cover the Myrtle Beach city council meetings about the bike rallies? How about the Surfside meetings about the smoking ban? If you have an issue or election that you want to adopt as your own, let’s have at it netizens of the Grand Strand.