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An examination of the impact of nonpartisanship in electing city officials by testing the following 4 hyp's: (1) SES of authorities is higher in nonpartisan cities than in partisan cities, (2) past partisan pol'al experience is less in nonpartisan cities, (3) more Republicans are elected in nonpartisan cities, & (4) authorities are older in nonpartisan than in partisan cities. The data used to test these hyp's comes from U's sent in 1967 to 398 mayors & councilmen in all Ohio cities with a pop over 25,000. Return rate was 67.5%. The hyp's were developed on the bais of 2 possible ways nonpartisanship could influence who was elected to office: (a) it could have an impact on who decided to run for office, & (b) it can have an impact on who, of those deciding to run, will win. The former line of reasoning would support hyp's (1), (2) & (3). The latter would support hyp's (1), (3) & (4). The only hypothesis that was disconfirmed was (2). This suggests that substantively nonpartisan elections favor higher SES people, Republicans, & older people. The fact that only hypothesis (2) was disconfirmed also suggests that the means by which nonpartisan elections have an impact is in determining the potential success of candidates in the election rather than in affecting potential candidates decision to run. AA.