Running for Mayor of Ann Arbor: Steve Bean
Running for mayor as an independent candidate starts pretty easy.
Steve Bean obtains nominating petitions as an independent candidate for mayor of the city of Ann Arbor. Behind the glass in the city clerk's office is Lyn Badalamenti. (Photos by the writer.)
It’s a five-minute session at the city clerk’s office.
This brief background piece covers some of the nuts and bolts of that process, based on Steve Bean’s Tuesday afternoon appearance on the second floor of city hall at the city clerk’s office. As a bonus, there’s a bit of city history thrown in.
After Bean told Lyn Badalamenti in the city clerk’s office that he was there to pick up nominating petitions, she set to work assembling a sheaf of papers. The spelling of Bean’s family name was the first order of business: “Like the vegetable,” he offered. Next up: A choice between “Steve” versus “Steven.”
The name that potential signatories of Bean’s petitions will see – as well as voters looking at November’s ballot – is “Steve.”
His name will be recognizable to some readers from his service on the city’s environmental commission. He now chairs that body. Before that, he served for nine years on the city’s energy commission. Some city records, especially older documents like city council minutes from April 9, 1992 – which contain the record of his appointment to the energy commission – show Bean’s name as “Steven.”
But the choice for the shortened variant was one he’d thought through before Badalamenti asked him: “That’s how people know me,” Bean explained to The Chronicle. [Full Story]