Like most Californians, valley residents are angry at their elected officials these days, but apparently not angry enough to run for their positions.

With just two months until the filing period opens, few people are surfacing as candidates for the November election. That ballot will feature dozens of seats on Stanislaus County schools boards, irrigation districts and two city councils -- Modesto and Ceres.

As mentioned earlier, three people have filed statements of intent to run for District 4 for the Modesto council -- Joe Muratore, Jeff Perine and Robert Stanford. There were no other statements filed with the city clerk's office as of Friday afternoon.

I wish I had saved the voice mail so I could share the woman's exact words with you, but suffice it to say she was angry.

We had run, over the previous couple of days, several letters to the editor that she considered Obama-bashing, and she figured that was strong evidence that we'd become "a right-wing extremist" newspaper. She left no name or number, but I don't think she really wanted to talk to me directly anyway.

Early last month, I spoke with another woman upset that we had run two letters critical of Israel on the same day. Why, she asked, didn't you run a pro-Israel letter with them? I told her the answer: Because we didn't have any pro-Israel letters at that moment.