One? Yeah, usually. Two? Once in a while.
But four sitting St. Paul city council members deciding not to run for re-election?
"That's not happened in my memory," said Stan Kusunoki, who began his involvement in election campaigns in 1968, as a kid attending the famed Humphrey-Muskie Bean Feed.
St. Paul has seven wards, and the decision by Russel Balenger (1), Chris Tolbert (3), Amy Brendmoen (5), and Jane Prince (7) to forgo another term in their wards means newcomers making up more than half of city council.
"We'll see how good they are at coalition-building," said Kusunoki. "A lot of these people (who are running for those seats) have not been in the politician sphere for that long."
Each of the open seats has at least four candidates on the ballot.
Back on the ballot are Rebecca Noecker (2), Mitra Jalali (4), and Nelsie Yang (6).
The election has the potential to produce a major shift in political dynamics when it comes to running Minnesota's capital city.
"Here's the difference I'm hoping for," said Kusunoki. "It's been a lot of top-down. I'm hoping that there will be representatives where it will be from the ground-up, and that they'll actually take back what they're getting from the community."
A community, he notes, that is getting younger.
"This election, I think, is going to shape what goes down over the next several decades. We're at a turning point where we're trying to get a whole new generation of voters involved. This election is going to be one of the litmus tests to see whether we've got them involved or whether they're just going to stand aside."
Kusunoki said more young people voting could change the whole dynamic.
"Not just locally, but nationally," he said.
In Thursday's Part Four of Behind the Ballot, WCCO's Laura Oakes looks at the races in Minneapolis for City Council. See all of WCCO's Behind the Ballot stories here.