It's never too early to start election speculation
BRIAN ACKLEY Political Columnist
The great thing about being a political columnist is roughly the equivalent of wanting a beer at about 11 o'clock Saturday morning. You know that you should really wait another hour or so before cracking the first cold one of the weekend, but at the same time, as the rationalization goes, it's always noon somewhere in the world.

There's always a political race somewhere. And, right about now, they're not too hard to find, despite the fact that we're many months away from electing a new county executive and years away from swearing in a new president.

At one time, "candidate fatigue" meant just that: bags under the eyes, drooping shoulders and slurred stump speeches in out-of-the way towns and cities. "Jails at their worst are better than schools at their best," one-time Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson once uttered in the midst of a draining 1984 campaign swing in one of those out-of-the-way places, Ference, Ala. It was fatigue that eventually compounded itself into even bigger issues that reduced George McGovern's short-lived vice-presidential pick Thomas Eagleton, who just passed away last week, to one of the most infamous political punch lines of all time.

Today, it's a much different definition. In the space of about five days last week, we learned presidential wannabe Barack Obama was somehow tied to Strom Thurmond, John Edwards miraculously read the mind of Christ, and the sordid family wranglings and relationships of popular Rudy Giuliani had become a growing blot on the Republican's otherwise-rosy reputation. Pick a topic, any tired topic, and it's a good bet that it has the name Clinton attached to it.

If we aren't already tired of the pursuit of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., we will be soon.

And it's why in Erie County there's no mistaking that the "fresh face" factor is frothing front and center in finding our next executive. Here's betting that our next fearless leader is newer-smelling than the leather in a two-day-old Cadillac.

It's no mistake that Paul Clark and Chris Collins could very well be their respective party's county executive standard-bearers this fall, in large part because they are far from standard issue.

Clark's relatively low-key approach as a Democratic town supervisor - when was the last time a TV camera showed up at a West Seneca board meeting anyway? - will easily be parlayed into a political plus before long. And, as a current office holder, at least not everyone in the county has to ask, "Paul who?"

Should indeed Chris Collins be the GOP pick, he brings a highly successful private-sector background, which voters might like. His one other major political dabble, when he was truly a fresh face, was a surprisingly strong showing against John LaFalce, at the time Western New York's Thurmondesque equivalent.

Whether there's enough time to fully sell himself to a slumbering electorate, however, is the $64,000 polling question.

Indeed, the most important political fatigue of all is the one that has enveloped voters. While new names and new ideas are tempting, voters still too often inexplicably reach for the Linus

like security blanket of an all-too-familiar name once the all-too-familiar voting booth curtain

closes.

Still, there's enough evidence in the last two years to believe that the Van Winkle-like fog in which voters have been entombed for the past two decades might slowly be fading. Recent town elections have landed heretofore unlikely candidates in positions of power. Even Eliot Spitzer's coronation and continued cantankerous confrontations with everything from health care to political hangers-on is fuel for the inevitable voter awakening that is the ultimate, and only, way to solve our puzzle of political pointlessness.

Erie County's November elections, and not just the county executive's race, will serve as the next frontier in finding out whether voters are still seduced by the Sominex of status quo or fatigued enough to finally fight back with a fist full of NoDoz. Like a favorite Canadian import, it's time the next round of winners comes from out of the blue.

(Brian Ackley is a columnist for the Weekly Independent Newspapers of Western New York. Opinions expressed here are those of the author.)