Off Beat: Pain ends on Nov. 6

It's election time in Yuba-Sutter. You can tell by the lack of interest.

Let's see, you've got one candidate for the school board who absented himself to the East Coast for a few weeks because that's where he should campaign.

You've got a Marysville councilman who can't be bothered, so he misses a debate and then doesn't care to be interviewed by the local newspaper.

There is some kind of controversy in Yuba County, where it's Supervisor Hal Stocker against some folks who don't want Yuba County to become another Napa County.

You definitely don't want Yuba County to be like Napa County. There's no upside in that, obviously. Yuba County has it over Napa County in every possible way. Obviously.

Yuba City already had an election to fill a spot on the City Council. Four people voted — the remaining members of the council.

The winner, Craig Starkey, seems like a nice enough fellow. He lost when he ran in a real election a few years ago, but that apparently was good enough for the current councilmembers.

Starkey, in his letter to the council, touted all he learned as an assistant scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts.

Not a good time to be touting membership in the Scouts, if you've noticed some recent news accounts. But he has a long and distinguished resume.

In other races, you've got two guys battling for the prestigious post of Marysville mayor. The winner may go down in history as the mayor who presided over the city's bankruptcy.

That election for your congressional representative should be more interesting than it is. There's no Wally Herger, so that should make a change of pace in the conversation. There's only so many times you can hear "radical environmentalists" before wretching.

And there's another Yuba City City Council race. In this one, the voters will make the choice. If the decision was based on spelling and grammar, John Dukes might have a problem.

In a recent mailer to voters, Dukes, "a proven voice," noted that he helped improve flood protection that included "repairing and reinforcing 44 miles of levy..."

Yes, it said levy. He may be a proven voice, but he's not much of a proofreader.

There's also the pseudo-controversy involving three of the Yuba City candidates who are upset at one candidate. Maybe those three candidates shouldn't be so whiny.

Time to put on your big-boy pants, gentlemen. It's politics, even in Yuba-Sutter.