The Gaslight Festival in Jeffersontown starts Sunday, which promises to be a little more politically intriguing than usual this year.

There are the announced candidates for Clay Foreman’s job as Mayor who are sure to be making their presence felt. Council members Bill Dieruf and Kay Ackerson both see Foreman as vulnerable when he runs for re-election. It may come down to how long voters’ memories are.

The Mayor has been keeping a low profile since his infamous run-in with local police, his buddy Joe McMillan getting arrested, and later fired, for drug possession, and his decision to bypass the drug testing that all the Council members agreed to undergo.  All that followed the heat Foreman took after a C-J investigation discovered some questionable practices in the way the city kept track of gas purchases last year.

But Foreman has stayed out of the news much of this year, and you know how people tend to forget and forgive. See Rick Pitino. But Foreman can’t go out and win games to polish his public persona.

Behind the scenes, Foreman recently fired a woman who’s been running much of the Gaslight’s activities for years, Barbara Carby. The chamber installed John Cosby, a former economic development chief, as the new Chamber president. But Foreman has been conspicous in his absence at a few city-endorsed events.

Sounds like what the city needs is a little positive P.R., and it is attempting to buy that with a new campaign it has hired local firm New West to do. In fact, there’s a new website the city just launched as part of that effort, which is really nothing more than an attempt to get residents to tell officials what they like about the city.