Denton political veteran Neil Durrance has entered the race for mayor against incumbent Mark Burroughs. We will try to avoid the Mutt and Jeff references, but it won't be easy.
The ticket won't close until March 5, when the filing period ends, but these two already shape up as the main contenders. There is a third candidate in the race at this point - marketing director Donna Woodfork - but Burroughs and Durrance will probably suck up most of the oxygen in the room unless some other well-known local politicos vault into the ring to make it a rassle-royal.
Both Durrance and Burroughs have served on the City Council before - they shared a stint from 1998 to 2001 - and both have taken a long look at a seat in Congress. Durrance actually ran as the Democratic nominee against U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess in 2010; Burroughs says he probably would have run for Congress this year had a new district been created for Denton. It wasn't, so he opted instead to seek a third term as mayor.
If the field doesn't grow between now and March 5, voters will have some interesting decisions to make. The mayor has always had his critics - we've taken to calling them "the usual suspects" around the office water cooler - but he has disappointed even some former supporters recently with actions that have seemed to indicate a slow drift toward an imperious if not imperial administration, including: ignoring and/or restructuring volunteer city boards and commissions; keeping a resignation secret from his City Council colleagues; and signing on to an ill-advised end run around the electorate in setting up the construction of a new power plant.
Durrance touched upon all these matters when interviewed in connection with his filing. It will now be up to the voters to determine if he was genuinely outraged or if he is simply the latest local incarnation of Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, who is famously credited with saying, "There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader."
There is also the question of partisanship to consider. City races are nonpartisan by law and custom, but they are never completely free of party politics.
Burroughs has been hard to classify. Some of his critics claim he governs like a free-spending Democrat; others condemn him as a ruthless, right-wing Republican. He's pretty much kept mum on the subject, which is a perfectly reasonable position for him to take in an officially nonpartisan race.
Durrance, on the other hand, is an unabashed Democrat, having served as the party's county chairman as well as its nominee for Congress. We presume he will downplay his party affiliations during this race, for reasons that are both idealistic and pragmatic in ruby-red North Texas.
Regardless of their party affiliations - or lack of same - both Burroughs and Durrance come from the same clubby community of political activism in Denton. They're both lawyers, and they both served on the City Council with the support of a lot of the same people. They will both no doubt be vying for the support of those people in this campaign, and, we hope, trying to stir up enough interest to increase the traditionally dismal voter turnout.
In any event, the campaign is apt to be an interesting one, and we don't necessarily mean that in a good way. Burroughs is one of the most pleasant men we know to meet and talk to, but his campaigns have tended to be rough-and-tumble. The last man who ran against him, Bob Clifton, ended up being indicted for bribery, a case of political overreaching that eventually died of embarrassment.
Durrance, for his part, has a reputation as a man who is almost as unpopular among his friends as his enemies. He is blunt, argumentative and not overly given to social niceties where politics is concerned.
If Donna Woodfork intends to stick around while these two go at it, she had best wear protective headgear and practice taking evasive action.
It could get pretty salty out there.
