Public administration scholars often have focused on the relationship between elected and oppointed officials. This study assesses the extent to which public administrators' relationships with elected officials conform to the three models that scholars have used to characterize that relationship: the orthodox politics-administration dichotomy, the modified dichotomy, and a parthnership model. In addition, the study seeks to determine whether demographic, structural, and experiential variables relate to respondents' preference for each of the three models. The data come from a mail surveu pf a random sample of U.S. local government managers. Using factor analysis, the study finds that managers identify with all three models, with the modified dichotomy model explaining the most variance among the managers and the orthodox dichotomy model the last. Salary, governing board size, private-sector experience, and gender relate positively and at significant levels to identification with the orthodox dichotomy model; public administration education and population relate negatively to the partnership model. Public administration education relates negatively to identification with the partnership model. The identification of local government managers with both the orthodox and the modified dichotomy models indicates a continuing emphasis on insulating administration from politics. That most most managers posit a strong role for themselves in policy making by identifying with either the modified dichotomy or the partnbership model indicates that these public administrators see themselves very differently from the image of the passive haqdwringer some-times depicted by those who criticize or caricature bureaucracy. The dominant model espoused by contemporacy public adminstration scholars, that of the partnership model, does have a strong empirical referent among practicing public administrators, indcating support for the potential strengths of blending politics and administration in policy development and administration