Here at City Paper, we have a soft spot for crazy people who run for office. So last Thursday night, when the Committee of Seventy, Young Involved Philadelphia and Young America Political Action Committee held a Constitution Center forum for potential candidates, we were there.

Someone, we figured, would be offering sound bites about the global conspiracy to keep Rick Mariano down.

The 180-person auditorium was nearly filled to capacity with thirty-and-unders, most looking prim and proper, and not, at first glance, stereotypical loons. But there was some promise. In the back of the auditorium sat a boilerplate gray-bearded hippie (he could have stepped off a conveyor belt from Haight/Ashbury) who had come to represent the Green Party. Farther toward the front was a skinny white guy with wide eyes and hair that looked as though he'd stuck a fork in an electrical socket. They listened intently as four panelists pounded home this basic message: Running for office is not as hard as you think, and neither is winning.

In this May's primary, Philadelphians will elect 6,724 City Committeepeople, the grassroots liaisons between the rank-and-file voters and the ward leaders who endorse candidates for higher office. To run for a Committee seat, all you need is 10 signatures on a petition. It's not hard to win, either: According to the Committee of Seventy, many of these seats are not even currently filled.

After this was explained, one of the speakers asked audience members if they were considering running. Fewer than 10 people raised their hands, but, fortunately, the guy with the crazy hair was among them.

Ben Ditzler is 26, and planning on running for a Democratic Committee seat in the 13th Division of the 24th Ward, in Mantua. He recently bought a house there, which he's in the process of fixing up (this could explain the electrical-socket look). Disappointingly, Ditzler doesn't rant. Or rave.

Asked why he wants to run for office, he says he's fed up with the stuff that passes for governing in this town. And he's taken the extremely sane step of going down to City Hall to see if there's an incumbent in the seat he covets (there's not).

Maybe you don't have to be bonkers to run for office in this town.

Though, as we all know, it doesn't disqualify you.