THE NATION - Ohio city leaders say politics isn't kid stuff - After an 18-year-old nearly makes a runoff, voters will consider requiring candidates to be at least 23.

Eighteen might be old enough to vote, they say, or enlist in the military and fight in Iraq.

But in this middle-class Rust Belt town where factories churn out steel pails and tubes of lipstick, it may not be old enough to hold office: Next month, voters will consider whether to modify the town charter to require that future candidates be at least 23.

The minimum-age requirement was added to a ballot measure that, among other things, would also require candidates to disclose their criminal records.

Members of the Streetsboro City Council -- whose ages range from the 50s through the 70s -- say the move is simply practical: They want to ensure their mayor has enough life experience to manage a city of about 12,300 residents, along with a $20-million annual budget and full-time Police and Fire departments.

And they admit they were shocked that Brett McClafferty, 19, came close to landing that job this spring.

"I'm sure there are 18-year-olds out there, somewhere, who could run a city this size, but I haven't met them," said Stephen Michniak, a Portage County prosecutor and chairman of the commission that introduced the charter amendment. "I'm 37 now, and I know there's no way I could have done the job when I was 18."

Streetsboro's unusual ballot measure has raised eyebrows across the region and prompted lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio to investigate its constitutionality. But legal and political experts say Ohio's "home-rule" provision allows towns and cities to have a significant amount of control -- and freedom from state meddling -- over how they structure their local governments.

"It may be legal, but it's very uncommon for a town to make local election rules more stringent than a state's," said Kenneth Janda, a professor emeritus of political science at Northwestern University.

"Since the wake of the Vietnam War and the realization that people who were old enough to die in war should be old enough to vote, this country has been trying to draw people into the political realm -- not find ways to keep them out," he said.