Richmond's Mayoral Race Odds

Jon Baliles, Joe Morrissey and Levar Stoney

The following characterizations are being made on the fly. They are my impressions of how the 15 people who are listed at the VPAP website as Richmond's mayoral candidates stand today. So at this time I'm not dealing with rumors about any other candidates that are floating around. And, there's nothing scientific about this at-a-glance look at anyone's chance to win.

For what it's worth, this exercise divides the 15 announced candidates into five tiers:

• Most likely front-runners: Jon Baliles, Joe Morrissey and Levar Stoney are well known or at least well connected. Their campaigns should enjoy good financing. They will probably have sufficient staffs to help with the legwork.

• Most likely challengers: Michelle Mosby and Jack Berry are also well known. However, their visibility both helps and hurts them. Whether they will assemble the financial backing and volunteers needed to keep up with those on the first tier is an unknown. 

• Long shots: Lillie Estes, Chad Ingold and Alan Schintzius are candidates with plenty of ideas. They appear to have small but dogged followings. So, if they do well at events and get good press, maybe one or two of them could move up to being a challenger.

• Unlikely-to-no-chance: Because voters in most neighborhoods probably don't know much about them and I don't see much of a following for them, I suspect it would take an unforeseen development (a near-miracle) to catapult one of these four into being a challenger: Brad Froman, Bobby Junes, Nate Peterson and Rick Tatnall.

• Impossible: These three candidates seem to me to have zero chance, mostly because Richmonders already know them all too well: Lawrence Williams, Shirley Harvey and Bruce Tyler. Who knows why they are running?

Next month, after their petitions are checked and a few of the hopefuls become ex-hopefuls, I will publish a revised list that will assess the remaining candidates' chances of success. By then there could be reasons to move some on the list up or down.

-- Photos grabbed from the Internet.