Natchez is in the midst of what may be one of the city’s most talked about mayoral elections in decades.

The ballot contains plenty of familiarity in three candidates — Larry L. “Butch” Brown, Phillip West and Jake Middleton — who have filled the mayor’s chair before, plus two new faces, Bob Buie and Bill Furlow.

Voters have a responsibility to gather as much information as possible before casting a ballot, and plenty of you have been asking good questions. The Natchez Democrat has collected the questions many of our readers have e-mailed to us, posted online or mentioned in passing. We culled the list into 20 questions and posed them to all five mayoral candidates last week. The candidates were given three days in which to write out their own answers. Due to space limitations, each question had a maximum word count of either 50 or 100. Answers from all the candidates are published in today’s print edition of The Democrat.

The primary election is May 1. Furlow will not appear on that ballot because he is running as an independent. Buie will be uncontested in that race. The general election will be June 5.