As political scientists, many of us encourage our students to getinvolved in community activities and local politics; and in factmany of our political science colleagues have run for state andlocal (and, less frequently, national) office. While the literatureon parties, elections, and voting behavior may help provide us withsome context when we (or our students) enter the political arena,there is a striking dearth of literature on voting behavior (andcandidate behavior) in local elections. What Herson (1957) referred to as “the lost world ofmunicipal government” can still be so characterized today, though afew recent studies have attempted to predict winners of municipalraces (for example, McGleneghan and Ragland 2002; Lieske 1989). Thisarticle analyzes my own education in local politics, which resultedfrom my candidacy for the Town Council of Cazenovia, New York inNovember, 2005. I came to the experience of participating in a localcampaign with expectations shaped by my teaching and research inAmerican politics at the national level, and found that theseexpectations often gave way to the specifics of context. JenniferLawless, a political scientist running for Congress in 2006,expressed this sentiment as: “Political science is all generalities.Politics is all individual circumstances” (Fischer 2006).