The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

A Streetsboro man who two years ago nearly became the city's mayor at the age of 19 has been barred from this year's ballot because of a charter amendment that raised the age for holding office.

Brett McClafferty, now 21, came within about a half-dozen votes of winning the 2007 primary and a spot in a runoff.

Afterward, city leaders passed a charter amendment that raised the minimum age for becoming mayor to 23.

Pretty scuzzy, it seems to me, in a way that just setting minimum ages without any specific person in mind is not. Minimum ages are at least in principle plausible (though of course highly over- and underinclusive) proxies for an impartial judgment about who is likely to lack the sort of experience and maturity required for office. And of course they are a long-standing tradition, in both the U.S. Constitution (which requires a minimum age of 25 for Representatives, 30 for Senators, and 35 for the President and Vice-President) and in state constitutions.

They may not be sound, (1) because of their imprecision, (2) because voters are in a position to make the experience and maturity judgments themselves, and (3) because to the extent voters don't make the judgment well (likely because they aren't paying much attention to the race) there's little reason to think that the consequences would usually be that dire, since the maturity difference between a 23-year-old and a 25-year-old isn't really that great. But they are at least defensible. On the other hand, it's much less likely that a decision made in the wake of a nearly successful candidacy by a particular person, and one that is likely to disable at least one future candidacy by the same person, is similarly public-spirited, and much more likely that it is motivated by political opposition to this particular candidate. I can't speak to what exactly the motivations might be in Streetsboro, but as a general matter it seems to me there's plenty of reason to be highly skeptical of these sorts of changes that seem so closely tailored to one particular future candidate.

Thanks to Jason C. Miller for the pointer.