I find myself once again wishing the whole principal nominee thing would be done away with. Let the elected officials submit a slate, ranked or unranked, and give the SA the flexibility to rack and stack using their own insights and experience, and not be tied to having to make an offer to a designated principal if deemed fully qualified, even if they are ranked lower than other fully qualified candidates by the SA.
I think the SA nom panels do an excellent job overall, and I know many of our regular posters here sit on those panels. I am not quibbling with the principle of that part of the system.
The bigger issue of pros and cons of having a nom system at all has generated some interesting discussions here.