Election Reflections...

Let's talk a little about the election that took place last Tuesday, and the campaigns leading up to it.  As our experiment in self-government continues, it's a good idea and take a step back to look at elections and what they are designed to do and what they aren't designed to do.  At their best, campaigns and their associated debates and discussions should revolve around what the major issues of the day are in a given community, state or nation.  I am sure that everyone would agree that we were anesthetized by the mind-numbing ads coming from the state and national elections of 2012.  It was pretty much a wall-to-wall barrage of political commercials, mostly negative.  These pretty much were run non-stop from August through election day itself.  Amid all of this noise, sneaking in at the bottom of the ballot was a small but consequential race for District #2 City Commissioner for Lake Worth.

Before I go too much further, I want to let you know that this is my plea to move the municipal elections in Lake Worth back to March.  This item, along with the height issue (maybe) will be on the ballot slated for a special election in March 2013.  Money, time and effort are all key ingredients that go into any campaign.  How can the candidates that run for a seat in Lake Worth draw much attention and resources when you have all the noise going on in the form of state and national elections in even-numbered years.  I can't tell you the number of times that we heard people say that they were involved in the presidential campaign and couldn't devote time to the local Lake Worth race.  The same was said as an excuse, a legitimate one, to not give as much or any money to a local campaign.  How then, with restricted resources, can a local municipal race pierce through this political fog?

We have to keep in mind too that there is a built-in distortion between the voter turn-out in even and odd numbered years.  In odd-numbered years, we have three seats - two commissioners and the mayor - that play to an audience of about plus or minus 3,500 voters.  In this past election, 8,152 voted in the District #2 race.  So not only were candidates competing for more limited resources in terms of time, attention and money, but they had to broadcast their message to a larger audience - which draws even more resources in order to get your message across.

Campaigns give us an opportunity to discuss the major issues of the day and we need to realize that such a discussion is healthy and required for our representative form of government to function well - especially at the local level.  In Lake Worth, we almost didn't have that opportunity this year - perhaps for some of the reasons I already identified.  The District #4 race ended up being uncontested.  Thankfully, we were spared another term of the current Commissioner that occupies that seat as She Herself chose not to run for another term.  Getting John Szerdi up on the dais is a good thing, but we missed the opportunity to discuss the city's pressing issues of the day through the debate and conversations that would ensue had the seat drawn two or more candidates.

We came very close to that happening in the District #2 race.  For a while, it seemed that it was a "gentleman's agreement" where one side pledged we won't run someone against your guy if you don't run one against ours.  Now wouldn't that be sorry state of affairs.  Lost would have been the opportunity to talk about slum and blight, the high utility rates our residents face and the sorry state of much of the city's infrastructure.  Had we not had a race for the District #2 seat, the incumbent Commissioner could freely continue to misrepresent what is present in the city charter that explicitly allows the sale of the electric utility.  This coming from a person that was an active party in two petition drives - one to withdraw the land use and zoning designation for the beach and one related to regulating building heights in the downtown that we will see in March 2013. One would think that with such first hand knowledge of the referendum process and proponent of "letting the people vote" would think that such a referendum on the sale of the utility would be a good thing.  This hypocrisy was exposed for all to see in this campaign and, unfortunately, enough people seemed to think that it was o.k. to lie about such a matter and they put the person proffering the idea that the charter prevented the sale back on the dais - period.

So campaigns and elections are fundamental, almost sacred, elements in our representative form of government.  We need a quieter time of the year to focus on our local issues and November elections do Lake Worth a disservice.