** This isn’t exactly true. The city’s charter requires that two of the thirteen members of the City Council must be non-Democrats. Those seats are held by one genuine independent, a gay former Republican who left the GOP in protest; and Michael Brown, whose bona fides as an independent can be judged against the backdrop of being the son of the late Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and two previous city candidacies, both as a Democrat.