Local elections. Mayor Hindman.

We've had local elections here in Columbia at the beginning of April. Long before election day, I was assigned to cover the mayor's reelection campaign for The Missourian.

Darwin Hindman has been the mayor of Columbia since 1995. Not long before deciding to run again for mayor, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He decided, together with his wife Axie, his biggest supporter and unofficial campaign manager, to run for office anyway. His medical treatment went well and the only visible change in his social and political life was that Darwin worked from his home office. He didn't do any door-to-door campaigning, but attended a lot of meetings. He was very confident throughout the campaign.

Darwin Hindman reads his e-mail at home to prepare for a next day of campaigning.

Hindman thanks his friends and supporters on election night, at the election party, just a couple of hours before the official results came in.

Axie and Darwin Hindman share a laugh with Jim Matteson of the Columbia Realtors, at the end of a political forum, where all the candidates met to answer questions from the public.

Mayor Hindman looks on while other candidates answer questions during the Columbia Realtors forum.

At the end of the Realtors forum, Hindman walks out of the room with Jim Loveless, the 4th Ward Counselman at the time.

In his home office, Hindman uses his computer to work on the daily stuff.

Hindman keeps track of his busy schedule in his home office. Even though the doctors recommended that he should take it easy, there were a lot of meetings that he had to attend for the campaign.

Darwin and Axie have lunch in their living room, in the middle of a busy day. Axie has been his closest advisor and guardian.

Supporter Jean Goldstein hugs Hindman, after the preliminary election results showed he was way ahead of his opponent, John Clark. The preliminaries were confirmed by the final results: Darwin Hindman got 74.76 percent of the votes.