The quiet before the election

It’s a quiet day today; the phones aren’t ringing much and the election-season flood of letters has ceased.

It’s a strange kind of quiet, accentuated by the gloomy skies. It feels like people are holding their breath, waiting to see what happens next Tuesday.

We’ll have the local election results posted at www.nuggetnews.com as soon as they are available on Tuesday night. The print edition will, as always, lag a week behind. So it goes as a Wednesday weekly with a Tuesday press time.

The local option question and the city council election are the main points of local interest. I think the local option will pass, but not by a comfortable margin. Too many people are feeling pinched by the economy to expect a mandate for local school funding.

My guess is that Mayor Brad Boyd will hold on to his council seat, and so will Lon Kellstrom. I think that Jerry Bogart will take the third seat, but that’s just a guess based on what I hear on the street and that’s mostly a self-selecting sample.

A couple of people have taken exception to the fact that The Nugget did not mention Wendy Holzman at all in our endorsement a couple of weeks ago. It has long been our practice to offer our reasons for endorsing those we choose and not to discuss reasons for not endorsing a candidate.

It’s an effort to be positive, but I can see how it could be taken amiss.

One online commentator wonders if it’s “a problem with women.” Sigh. Well, someone’s always going to impute sinister motives... Sorry. It ain’t nearly so dramatic. That’s the kind of thing that makes me love politics so much.

Endorsements are just another opinion. An informed and educated opinion, but only that. I hope the opinion is valued, but it should only be a part of the mosaic good citizens put together for their voting decisions.

One thing I try never to lose sight of in this job — or in life — is that no matter how much research you do, how much thought you put into making a decision, no matter how passionately you believe in your position, you could be wrong.

Examples I’ll never live down: I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 because I thought he was the lesser of two evils. Wrong. We endorsed Greg Brown for Sheriff. Twice. Wroooong!

I’ve made my picks, made my call on ballot measures, put my ballot in the slot at City Hall. I hope I made the right choices, but I’m not sure. I did my due diligence and I think I’m right. But, you know, I could be wrong.

Jim Cornelius, Editor