Progressive: is that what White Plains needs to be? That's what Milagros Lecuona thinks.

Seven. That's the number of times Common Council member and candidate for mayor in 2017 Milagros Lecuona uses the word progressive in a short email message soliciting funds for her campaign.

It suggests too much of a tactical approach to a campaign in this city of only 50,000 when the most fundamental issue, as always, is that Common Council members are selected at large and not by geographic districts. This odd form of representation exaggerates a natural tendency for people who live in downtown apartments to be less involved in municipal government and the more entrenched residents in houses away from downtown dominate policy and procedure to their quite different interests.

Candidate Lecuona seems to want to replace one mayor who does not live downtown in an apartment with another, perhaps relying on her gender and ability to speak Spanish to suggest more of a difference with Mayor Tom Roach than actually exists.