Tortoise editorial: Leon County elections are over; but will promises be kept?

Election season has ended across the country – at least in those districts that aren’t facing delayed results or recounts – and for that we’re thankful as the holidays approach.

Many people seemed to think the campaigning this year was as ugly as it could get, whether on the airwaves, in the newspapers, or through word of mouth. Since control of Congress was up for grabs, that was an incentive for many politicians to turn to their arsenals of dirty tricks. Throw control of Congress into the mix and the mud is sure to fly.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of negative campaigning is that some research scientists say the tactics work. One such expert is Stanford communications professor Shanto Iyengar, co-author of the book “Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate.” Negative ads make supporters of the attacker more likely to vote, and negative ads make followers of the victimized candidate depressed and less likely to vote, Iyengar told the Associated Press.

So, if you woke up election day and felt like just staying in bed, you probably had watched too many commercials slamming your candidates.

Still, here in the Big Bend, the ugly side of campaigning seemed to be mainly held in check. Leon County has a smart, thoughtful populace. With two universities, a community college, and the state capitol, how can we not be intelligent? We demand our political fights to be decided by the facts, not innuendo.

Yes, we had to endure campaign ads for statewide races that sometimes took liberties with the “truth.” But local candidates kept it relatively clean. Perhaps that encouraged Leon County to lead Florida in voter turnout yet again, turning out 63 percent of registered voters. Thanks again, Ion Sancho, the county’s supervisor of elections.

Still, some people in the Big Bend were depressed after the election. Some are still wondering how 60 percent of Leon County voters could reject raising the sales tax a half cent to fund health care for uninsured workers and their families. The Tortoise plans to watch closely to see whether the public officials and business leaders who did not back this particular insurance plan will make good their promises to create another way to provide insurance to the working poor.

When we watch the City Commission’s deliberations on our energy future, the Tortoise plans to pay special attention to Debbie Lightsey. We want to determine whether Commissioner Lightsey was honest when she said that she would review all options with an unbiased approach, or whether she was trying to appease the citizens who were turned off by her initial enthusiasm for relying on coal to meet our energy needs.

Yes, now that the campaigning is over and the results are in the books, we’ll be watching. We’ll be watching to see which elected officials meet the challenge of public service and which ones fall short. We’ll share our observations with you. And we make those promises with as much positivity as we can muster. Honestly.