STA, 16 November 2018 - Slovenians will head to the polls on Sunday to elect 212 mayors. Some of the mayors seeking re-election have been in office since their municipalities were incepted, others have not been unseated for nearly two decades. About three dozen sitting mayors will not face a rival at all.
Nine mayors have been in office since Slovenia's first local election in 1994. One more has served as mayor since 1997, when his predecessor was appointed cabinet minister.
Another four mayors have held their office since 1998, when the number of municipalities in the country went from 147 to 193, as a number of local communities split into smaller ones.
The number of municipalities has been gradually increasing through the years, from 60 in 1991 to 212 in 2011.
Most of the long-sitting mayors do not often make national news, but when they do, it is typically positive news, which goes some way towards explaining their staying power.
This goes especially for Franc Čebulj of Cerklje na Gorenjskem, one of the most prosperous communities in the country, located north of Ljubljana.
Not only does it rank highest among municipalities by average salary, data for 2017 also show that the municipality had not taken out any new loans.
At least in part, the community's success can be attributed to the fact that the biggest airport in the country is located there, alongside a number of companies dependent on air transport. Currently, several international logistics firms are building new hubs near Cerklje.
On the other hand, there is Celje, in the northeast, which used to bill itself as the most developed city in the country.
But since its hay day several towns have outpaced or caught up with Celje, which has become the main source of criticism levelled against its incumbent Mayor Bojan Šrot, who has been in office since 1998.
Several of his six rivals believe that Celje should do more to attract highly-trained workers. Nonetheless, Šrot is likely to be re-elected: a poll released by newspaper Večer on Wednesday even indicated that he will carry the vote already in the first round.
Despite waning performance, Šrot is a good example of another major cause of staying power.
Šrot used to helm the People's Party (SLS), a political grouping that although it has not made it into parliament since 2014 usually does rather well in local elections, especially in dozens of small rural municipalities. In fact, many of the long-serving mayors come from its ranks.
While many of the mayors who have been in office for two decades or more have changed parties during this time, most of the mayors who did not break party allegiances in fact come from the ranks of the SLS.
Local election races are usually quite intense and can even get dirty, but the situation is much quieter in more than 30 municipalities where incumbent mayors face no rivals.
In the nortwestern-most municipality of Kranjska Gora, for example, there are almost no indications election weekend is coming up. While some posters promoting council candidates have been posted along the Upper Sava Valley, there are virtually no posters of the incumbent Janez Hrovat, who faces no rival.
But interestingly, a great number of municipalities with only one mayoral candidate are in the northeast.
One of them is the tiny community of Razkrižje, whose incumbent Stanko Ivanušič has been in office since 1998 and, facing no rivals, will remain mayor a sixth term.
The reason why they are not faced with a rival is because of good cooperation with all political groups in their municipal councils, the mayors of Sevnica and Križevci pri Ljutomeru, Srečko Ocvirk and Branko Belec, recently told the national broadcaster TV Slovenija.
Nonetheless, Belec added that a real election race shows the candidate how much they are really worth, while another unrivalled incumbent mayor from the Pomurje region, Damijan Jaklin of Velika Polana, added that competition is welcome because it forces candidates to do better.
All our local elections coverage is here
