Toledo’s most unusual mayoral election is barely two weeks away — and if voters have to struggle to keep the seven candidates straight, this newspaper has an obligation to keep the coverage fair.

Reader Christine Holliday had a question about a particular term. “The descriptions of our current mayor, current council person, and former mayors are matter-of-fact,” she wrote.

“Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson, former Mayor Mike Bell. Fair enough; these are identifying, nonjudgmental labels,” she said.

But she asked, “Why then is mayoral candidate Opal Covey described as “evangelist and perennial candidate?”

She thought that seemed “snarky, petty, and sarcastic” and wondered why the same phrase wasn’t used for Carty Finkbeiner since “he has run for office many, many times, hasn’t he?”

That’s a legitimate point. When your ombudsman searched past stories, I found that Ms. Covey was called a “perennial candidate” nearly every time she was mentioned, which at the very least indicates a lack of original thinking on the part of some reporters.

Trying to come up with a different adjective might be a good idea. But what does “perennial candidate” mean, anyway?

Wikipedia, the sometimes unreliable but hugely popular online encyclopedia, says a perennial candidate is one who “frequently runs for an elected office but seldom wins.”

The late columnist William Safire’s mastery of language, especially when it came to politics, was highly respected. In Mr. Safire’s New Political Dictionary he defined the term perennial candidate as “an attack phrase on one who has tried and failed before.”

Usually, that means failed many times. Indeed, Ms. Covey has run frequently and never gotten more than 1 percent of the vote.

Carty Finkbeiner has run more times and for more offices than I can remember, starting with a run for Congress in 1974. But there’s one big difference between him and Ms. Covey: He has been elected mayor three times and served on the council before that.

Nevertheless, he was also occasionally called a “perennial candidate” in The Blade prior to his first mayoral victory in 1993.

Your ombudsman thinks it may be time to retire this tired old phrase and to come up with some original wordage instead.

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Toledoan Kevin Ruddell was puzzled by the first sentence of an Oct. 8 story by Jim Provance, The Blade’s Columbus bureau chief. The article’s headline read, “Lawmakers pass revised charter bill.”

The story began “lawmakers said reforms sent to Gov. John Kasich’s desk on Wednesday should prevent future attempts to protect underperforming charter schools and their sponsors.”

“My confusion is regarding the word ‘should,’” the reader told me. Was this editorializing on the part of the reporter?

Was it a value judgment, as in “morally you shouldn’t do this?” An either-or situation? Or a hint that there might be “loopholes” that the bad actors can use to get away with substandard schools?

To the best of your ombudsman’s knowledge, the answer is … none of the above. According to my reading of that story, “should” here means something like “this screw should hold the machine together.” Nowhere in the piece does Mr. Provance hint at how he feels about charters or the rules governing their oversight.

In any event, your ombudsman finds nothing wrong with how the story was written or displayed.

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Now for something that caused anguish among at least half a dozen readers, but which was not The Blade’s fault.

Susan Buckholz wrote on Sept. 24: “I’d like to know why ‘Get Fuzzy’ hasn’t been in The Blade for the last few days. I’m a longtime subscriber, and it’s my favorite comic strip.”

The answer is that for some mysterious reason the author, Darby Conley, gradually stopped doing new daily strips, something he never has explained. He does, however, still do new ones on Sunday, and The Blade still runs that strip faithfully.

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Note on letters to the editor: The Blade often gets far more letters than it has space to run. Not all can get in the paper.

Richard Ward of Bowling Green wrote a response last month to another letter and then sent it to The Blade’s editorial page.

For weeks, nothing happened. Finally, Mr. Ward wrote to me. “Would you be willing to find out what happened to my letter?”

Well, sadly, no. The editorial page gets many hundreds of letters, and neither they nor I have the time to give each writer an individual reply. However, Dave Kushma, the editor of The Blade, did tell me that letters that respond to other letters are less likely to be printed than those that offer a fresh perspective on an issue.

Anyone who has a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/​o The Blade; 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, 43660, or at my Detroit office: 555 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call at 1-888-746-8610; or email me at OMBLADE@aol.com. I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply. Reminder, however: If you don’t leave me an email address or a phone number, I have no way to get in touch with you.

Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade’s ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan. Contact him at: omblade@aol.com

First Published October 18, 2015, 4:00 a.m.