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DAZE WORK: No primary no secondary concern here
By all that’s right and holy, today’s Banner Graphic should be jammed with post-election information as the first edition following the Indiana Primary Election.
Normally you’d find stories about the races and the survivors, articles about voting trends and a chart with numbers enough to stress your reading glasses. If you’ve searched high and low past the obits and through the classifieds and the funnies, don’t worry. You didn’t miss our coverage.
Primary day 2023 came and went without as much as a whimper here in Greencastle. Without a single contested race for either party, there was no Greencastle municipal primary election this year, leaving all decisions on future city leadership to be decided in the November general election. Republican Lynda Dunbar vs. Democrat Brian Cox for mayor and on down the line.
Momentarily no primary seemed like a good thing with the elimination of a long, stressful night in the Banner Graphic newsroom, although there’s always free newsroom pizza to make the night a little better and keep everyone in the building and on task until all our calls are made and the results are posted.
And while it’s easier on us, the lack of a primary also saves the city some money. I believe a recent primary in which there was only one contested race for one party cost the city $25,000 to put on the election. With inflation, the increased cost of doing business and the unavoidable COVID connection, that figure is probably closer to $35,000 now (although fewer vote centers are open when we vote these days).
Sure we all bitched and moaned a few years back about having to have a primary to settle one City Council seat nominee on one side of the ballot but it seems so un-American not to have a primary and allow the process to play out.
Certainly both parties would rather have a productive primary, indicative of more interest and more candidates.
If you ever needed proof of the value of the primary, I like to point to the 1983 city version in which veteran businessmen Ben Cannon and Clair Williams vied for the Democrat nomination for mayor of Greencastle.
The old one-man, one-vote theory emerged the winner as Cannon beat Williams by one vote to face Republican Gerald Warren. To his credit, the late Williams rejected any notion of a recount.
Currently you have to wonder if the national political climate has had an impact on the local level and kept some otherwise good people from subjecting themselves to all the scrutiny that tends to come with being a candidate these days. I mean, nobody wants Tucker Carlson calling them at home.
During discussion of bills in the 2023 Indiana General Assembly that would have required school board candidates to cite their political affiliation when running for election, it was stressed by both parties that it is difficult enough getting good people to run that such a move would discourage some good candidates from getting involved.
Between now and November both parties will certainly be adding names to their city ballot where vacancies presently exist. But that’s not the same as offering up two or three candidates (think Putnam County sheriff’s race every four years) and letting the voters decide.
It’s too late for me and you and a dog named Boo to do anything about it, but let’s hope by the time we get around to 2027 we’ll be able to have more choices. Heck, by then our candidates might be robots of artificial intelligence fame and the whole thing be a real exercise in futility.
Nah, we Americans would never let that happen ... would we? Besides, I like pizza too much to miss out on another election night at the old BG.