"About a month ago, a lot of us thought this would be a real ho-hummer," Gannon University Political Science Professor Dr. David Kozak said of the 2009 Election...but not anymore; he says there's plenty to be excited about this go-round.

"This is going to be the preliminary for next year's Congressional elections in the off year, and of course that all leads up to the Presidential race in 2012."
 
Kozak pointed to the 2005 county executive race when Mark DiVecchio won by a razor thin margin...and believes history may repeat itself.

"It was settled by 121 votes...121 votes! When the two parties are mobilized, that's how close it got, so this is going to be close, has the potential to be close, there's been a lot of debates, a lot of exposure, and there's a lot of major issues out there."
 
Issues which are not lost on Erie County's major party chairs...

Brad Moore of the Erie County Republican Party says "This is an extremely important year; in an even numbered year, there's a lot of factors that are out of your control, national mood and other things; in odd-year elections like this, with your local elections, we use it as a real barometer of the strength of our party."

Cathi Zelazny with the Erie County Democratic Party says "The supervisors in Millcreek, Harborcreek, these are going to be instrumental in working with the county executive, the same way with the county council seats."
 
Which means the candidates have their work cut out for them to get every last vote.

"This is the most door-to-door I've ever seen our candidates do," says Moore. "It's going to be a good barometer for a political scientist to see what works- are you going to buy elections or can you really win them on the ground?"
 
Zelazny added "I've gotten calls today for rides for tomorrow, which I get excited about because that shows people's interest in voting and also people asking questions, I'm getting a lot of people asking questions about the candidates."
 
Reporter's Note:
County Clerk of Elections Doug Smith says the county's machine to count absentee ballots is down which means they'll have to count the roughly 1,250 absentee ballots by hand on Friday; Smith anticipates no problems.