Looking over the results from Tuesday's primary

Looking over the results of Tuesday's Republican primary, we see there were some expected outcomes and some surprises.

One factor that figures into a number of results is that, in a small town, elections are often strongly influenced not by the qualifications of the candidates or their positions on the issues, but how many relatives they have. Just like in junior high school, winning is often a popularity contest.

They don't teach citizenship in school any more. Years ago, adults were taught and often tried to set aside their own petty personal interests and vote keeping in mind who would be best for the position and the community as a whole. But after 60 years of being brainwashed by consumer advertising, most people don't give serious thought to their personal choices any more. From making a decision on what hamburger to buy or candidates to vote for, they simply want to "feel good" - or at the least, make the choice that best serves them.

Now, in the race for sheriff, it wasn't that complicated. Glenn Willis simply didn't make the case that he would be a better sheriff than Tim Ingram. The stupid rumor-mongering and gossip that fuels local races only irritated Willis into doing and saying things that made him look worse. His candidacy was a wasted opportunity. Being mature in public and community affairs means ignoring the petty back-stabbing done by hateful people.

Tim Ingram has been putting up with that for years, and he knows how to deal with it and why it isn't important if you know how to do your job and you do it. A wise man once said any time you do someone a favor, you make a bunch of enemies and one ingrate. Add to that the understanding that friends come and go but enemies accumulate, and you will understand both why Ingram was able to win handily as well as why Willis self-destructed.

The races for commissioner were both much closer and both are headed to runoffs in May. Al Riddle drew a pair of strong opponents who both probably thought that he would be easy to eliminate. One problem a lot of people have in life when they dabble in local politics is that they only listen to their friends and they don't seek wider information.

As the saying goes, you don't know what you don't know. One thing that definitely seemed to hurt Willis' campaign for sheriff was that he only seemed to hear from people unhappy with Ingram, and he didn't know what the population at large thought. In the same way, both Mack Love and Jeff Parchman probably didn't hear from the many people who approve of how Al Riddle has conducted himself at the courthouse.

In the same way that friends and family members of a local politician may often not even like them much, but support them because they hope for jobs and contracts, they are people who may not completely agree with each and every thing someone says in office but support him because overall they know their candidate will help to keep taxes down and puncture the good ol' boys' complacency that makes them think they can do whatever they want regardless of the consequences.

Love and Parchman fell into the "gravy train" category of candidates. It was difficult for Riddle, in a three-way race, to avoid a runoff, and he didn't, with Parchman being the odd man out. But Riddle got a solid 44 percent of the vote to Love's 34 percent. The "get along go along" gang will support Love in the primary, but May is a long way away.

Love may get more scrutiny and people may know more about him, which is not likely to be in his favor. After not going negative for most of the campaign, he went hateful in an ad in the Daily Tribune the Sunday before the primary, which shows a duplicitous character. To be a commissioner, you need more of a platform other than "I'm not Al Riddle."

On the other hand, Love's supporters have showed their true hateful character, and are probably planning some dirty tricks. There's a tradition in Mount Pleasant for someone to make an unsubstantiated charge against a candidate right before election day to get someone arrested and tossed in jail. It's happened in races for mayor and county treasurer, for example. The candidate may beat the charge later, but they lose the election because of the bad publicity. This is happened before, and people are already on the lookout for this stunt to be pulled against Al Riddle.

In the race for Precinct 3 Commissioner, the candidate we supported, Bobby Parr, missed the runoff by 20 votes. This was a tight three-way split, with Dana Applewhite getting 39 percent, Gary Murray 32 percent and Parr 29 percent. There was no last-minute sneak attacks such as Love did against Riddle, and this result may simply reflect the first qualification we mentioned before for winning at the local level - how many friends and family members each candidate had.

Parr's defeat is a real loss of an opportunity for the county. That being said, come May we are voting for Dana Applewhite. He's run for office before as a Republican and deserves a chance to show what he can do in office. Murray's background indicates he's likely to become one of the good old boys in office who thinks they own the county because they were born here.

It's a long way until the May 24 runoff. We'll keep you posted.