The law is clear on who can run for city office – including the new position of full-time mayor – in Pueblo. Candidates must be at least 18 years of age, be United States citizens, residents of the city for at least 12 months before election and free of any felony convictions. That’s it. Oh, there’s also the requirement to submit nominating petitions with no fewer than 100 nor more than 200 signatures of eligible voters in the city of Pueblo.

Nowhere does state law nor the city charter bar members of the City Council from running for mayor. That peculiar prohibition is in effect, however, in Colorado Springs, where local council members have to give up their seats to run for mayor.

The argument for following in lockstep with Colorado Spring seems irrelevant at this point. The reason is simple: Pueblo mayoral candidates – as many as 25 have declared so far – have this month and this month only to collect the 100 to 200 signatures required to make the city’s Nov. 6 ballot. There’s no time to amend the very charter amendment that voters adopted last fall to go to a full-time mayor form of government.

Read more at The Pueblo Chieftain.