Moscow has record number of mayoral contestants

(Interfax – MOSCOW, June 27, 2013) Two more aspirants filed for registration as Moscow mayoral candidates on Thursday, the city elections commission told Interfax.

“The documents were filed by two unemployed men: 53-year-old Andrei Kim and 43-year-old Sergei Golkin,” the commission representative said.

The city elections commission denied registration to one self-nominee, unemployed Alexei Denisov earlier in the day.

“There are 30 mayoral contestants now. Ten of them have been nominated by parties and the rest are self-nominated,” he said.

Acting Moscow Mayor, self-nominee Sergei Sobyanin, the Russian Communist Party’s nominee Ivan Melnikov, RPR-PARNAS’ nominee Alexei Navalny, Yabloko’s nominee Sergei Mitrokhin, A Just Russia’s nominee Nikolai Levichev, and thrash metal band leader Sergey “Pauk” Troitsky are some of the contestants.

There were only 15 aspirants in the previous mayoral election campaign in Moscow in 2003 and only four of them were able to get registered.