While most voters and members of the media seem to believe it's a foregone conclusion that Charlotte's mayoral race will be between two city councilmen — Anthony Foxx, a Democrat, and John Lassiter, a Republican — there's the little matter of today's primary.

Before Lassiter can take on Foxx, he's got to get through the "Dirty Book Guy," Martin Davis, and Jack Stratton.

CLT Blog reports:

Stratton, who doesn’t even live in Charlotte, features a rambling, incoherent website dedicated to an unintelligible conspiracy theory. The other fringe candidate, Martin Davis, has been dubbed “dirty book guy” by the Charlotte Observer and Creative Loafing.

Martin Davis first rose to notoriety at the October 7th, 1997 Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners meeting. Davis used a public comment period to read sexually explicit excerpts from “The Faber Book of Gay Fiction” which he had stumbled across at the public library. The meeting was broadcast live on television.

At first, the Commissioners allowed Davis to proceed. After several more sessions of reading aloud graphic and often homoerotic books, Chairman Parks Helms had enough. At the March 6th, 2001 County Commissioners meeting, Helms forbid Martin Davis from reading any adult material aloud. When Davis ignored the Chairman and attempted to read a special passage from “Woman on Top,” Helms had him forcefully removed from the building, or as Davis puts it “had a police officer attack me.”

Read more, and watch an excerpt from Davis' reading of "Woman on Top" here.

Here', in 2008, Davis pleads with the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners to reconsider funding for "Angels in America," a play with homosexual themes.