I live in a town area that has the chief of police (a force of maybe a dozen officers) running for mayor. The mayor's office oversees the chief of police...no conflict there.
I live in NY's 1st congressional district. We have a democrat but it is hard to tell what he is because he does NOTHING. We have a state senator representing us who, to put it mildly, has a cushy set of "consulting jobs" with the various towns in his district. We have three layers of government in our town...the town itself, the district "town" and the county and pay taxes to each.
Well, as the parody says "Badenov is Goodenov". The day is past when you can blame the voters for the quality of government...it is really time to blame some of these folks for the jobs they do or fail to do.