As campaigns all over the United States are cranking up their advertising ahead of the Nov. 7 elections, voters in Lexington have yet to see a single ad from any of the five candidates running for three open City Council seats.

"I don't like tooting my horn," said City Council hopeful Mike Conner, a Lexington native and assistant programs coordinator at the Rockbridge Area Recreation Organization.

Conner, Frank Friedman and Cecily Laub are the three candidates who have not previously served on City Council. Two other candidates, Mimi Elrod and Jim Gianniny, are campaigning for re-election.

Lexington City Council members are elected at-large, not from districts, which would be tiny since the city only has a population of about 7,000. The candidates are not affiliated with a political party, since the election is non-partisan. All that appears on the ballot are their legal names.

Voters have to take the initiative in finding out more about the candidates, Friedman said. A financial adviser who works out of the Bank of Rockbridge, Friedman said that is a nice change from the days he spent in Florida inundated with political advertising.

"The neat thing about Lexington is that you don't have to run a campaign," he said. "It's just a little bit of grippin' and grinnin'."

For the five candidates, "grippin' and grinnin'" is exactly how they are campaigning.

"It's very low-key," said incumbent Mimi Elrod, who was appointed to City Council in 2003 when one of the members moved out of Lexington. "I can't imagine people attacking each other. I don't think Lexington would respond positively to that."

Elrod said her strategy is simply going door-to-door and capitalizing on her tenure as a council member.

"I may put a small ad in the paper near election," she said.

This election differs from the previous two because there are more candidates than available spots on City Council. In 1998 and 2002, the candidates ran unopposed. This year, despite the political competition, the hopefuls are relying mostly on word-of-mouth as their election strategy.

"Pretty much everybody knows me," said Conner, a 1981 graduate of the former Lexington High School and a 1987 graduate of Washington and Lee University. "I was born and raised here. My family's all from here."

"In a town this size, word-of-mouth is your advertising," he said. "That's all the advertising you need."

Friedman, himself a 1984 graduate of Lexington High School, has served on the city School Board for the last six years, currently as chairman. He said he does not plan to do much advertising, either.

"I told myself I'd start campaigning on Oct. 1," he said. "And so far I've knocked on a few doors."

With three weeks to go until the election, voters unfamiliar with the candidates will have to rely on asking friends or reading about the race in the local newspapers. But Friedman said voters shouldn't worry.

"I don't think you can go wrong with any of the candidates," he said. "They're all fine people."