Audrey Clement is reportedly thinking about running for office again, this time for Arlington School Board.
That’s according to a post on Arlington Yupette, an anonymous, sometimes conspiracy-laden blog often associated with Jim Hurysz, a top donor and advisor to Clement.
It would be — by our count — either the eighth or ninth run for local office for the repeat candidate, who most recently ran for County Board. The Yupette blog suggests Clement would focus on fiscal restraint as a School Board candidate.
“The School Board will be increasingly focused on giving APS parents more Taj Mahal schools with every conceivable amenity that they’ve historically demanded,” it says. “So A.Y. is happy that a candidate with fiscal sanity who’s not addicted to Smart Growth is considering running for School Board.”
But not everyone thinks another campaign is a good idea for Clement. Sun Gazette editor Scott McCaffrey opined this morning on his blog that it is “time for a perennial candidate to call it a day.”
It’d be her second bid for that post, and she’s run either six or seven times for County Board, as well. Just about every time, she’s either garnered (if she was the lone non-Democrat on the ball) or shared (if there were more than one) the roughly 30 percent of votes cast against the dominant political party in A-town.
I say this as one who likes Clement and thinks she brings valuable points of view to the community conversation: It’s time for her to stop running for office.
If past track record is any indication, the odds will be overwhelmingly against Clement, who would be running to unseat incumbent Barbara Kanninen. On the other hand, uncontested elections are rarely a good thing in a democracy, and Clement has added to the civic conversation whenever she has run.
In your opinion, should Clement run again, or is time to hang it up, at least for now?