It was on April 27, 2005, that we took our first of many stabs at the District mayoral race. And it’s tomorrow, some sixteen months after we first tried to guess who would throw their hats in the ring, that voters will finally have their say.

Voters in the District and Maryland go to the polls tomorrow to vote in primaries for everything from senators to council-members to ANC representatives, with more than 800 candidates in the running. While we’ve done our best to keep up with all the on-goings with the region’s electoral politics, there is only so much we’ve been able to hit (the Post, on the other hand, has done an excellent job bringing everything together in their Voter Guide). With the primaries scheduled for tomorrow, we thought we’d take a quick look at the best, the worst, and the strangest from this election season so far.

Early on, we found out that Vincent Orange does his polling on the cheap. Real cheap. We also asked ourselves if he was the worst mayoral candidate ever. Current frontrunner Adrian Fenty jumped in the race early, and we argued that schools and affordable housing would be key issues in the election. After much waffling on the issue, we demanded that D.C Mayor Anthony Williams just make up his mind — a third term or not? Linda Cropp stepped into the race last August, a movement to push Williams to run again quickly fizzled out, and Michael Brown brought the mayoral hopeful tally to five. Cropp hit the streets hard in September, and we wondered how all the campaigning would affect the D.C. Council (it wasn’t good). In October, we guessed who Williams would endorse (we said Cropp; we were right), and toyed with City Administrator Robert Bobb running for mayor. November saw the first mayoral forum, and we offered our take on the winners and losers. In December, we asked how gay rights would affect the race, and everyone took some time off.

This year started with news of campaign war chests, and we saw Orange drop $12,500 on a sign for his campaign headquarters. Things quieted down some over the next few months, though we interviewed Michael Brown and A. Scott Bolden, heard more about money, saw Cropp win the city’s first straw poll, wondered how much the mayor should really make, and asked if Cropp was playing dirty. And, of course, we had all the Jonathan Rees you could shake a stick at.

It all comes to a head tomorrow. Let us know how your voting goes, but remember — don’t go to the wrong polling place.