Vigorous campaigns good for voters

With Carol White’s entrance into the Blytheville mayoral race last Friday, it’s safe to say that what was already an interesting political year just got a lot more interesting.

To date, White is the only announced candidate for the position, expected to be vacated by Barrett Harrison, who is running for the Arkansas State Senate. Current Mississippi County Sheriff James Sanders, a former Blytheville city councilman, has also publicly expressed interest in the position. There have been other rumored candidates of interest, and it’s a reasonable assumption that several more names will be thrown into the ring by the time filing opens in August.

And so, in a year which is already seeing vibrant campaigns for county judge, state senator, U.S. congressman, sheriff and justice of the peace, we can look forward to a vibrant Blytheville mayoral race as well.

It’s been 12 years since Blytheville saw an open race for its mayor. In 1998, with the retirement of Joe Gude, four candidates faced off. The slate included Harrison, Gary Hughey, Gene Henton and Lewis Richardson. That race came down to a runoff between Hughey and Harrison. Hughey, who was the administrative assistant to the mayor at the time, was essentially the status quo candidate. Harrison, interestingly enough, was the candidate “for change.”

This time around, it’s White who’s recycling the “change” message. And one thing’s for certain — with White in the race, it’s not likely to be boring. Since her appointment to the City Council last year, White has made a reputation for herself as a rouser of rabbles. Whether she can muster enough rabbles to mount a competitive campaign remains to be seen.

White reminds me a lot of Ross Perot, the former presidential candidate. Perot burst onto the scene back in 1992, and at first glance, came off as the fresh voice of reason — a common-sense guy with the intelligence and know-how to reform Washington. But as time went by, it became apparent that Perot wasn’t exactly playing with a full deck. Nonetheless, he rallied enough support to make a lot of noise in the ’92 campaign, and a little bit more in ’96. It seemed that as time went by, Perot had an increasingly smaller, yet increasingly more devout, group of followers. I could kind of see White following a similar path.

But I’ve always believed that there’s a place in the political process for mavericks and gadflies. Government leaders who always agree with one another are probably not serving the people. So I think it’s good that Carol White is running for mayor. This will be the first time that she’s run for elected office, and it will be useful to see how her ideas, positions and personality fare in the political marketplace.

That’s the same reason it’s good that there’s so many competitive races this year. Citizens of our community deserve a choice. Elections shouldn’t simply be coronations. They should be a chance for citizens to discuss what we want our community to be, where we want our community to go, and then make an intelligent choice for who is going to lead us there.

May there be more interesting candidates throwing their hats in the rings.

———

You can tell it’s an election year by the proliferation of yard signs across the community. So far, it looks like most candidates are sticking to the red-white-and-blue theme. It will be interesting to see if anyone tries to distinguish himself or herself with signs of a different color.

One candidate has distinguished himself with shape — going with a diamond, rather than the traditional rectangle. It has worked well.

Another candidate, meanwhile, has clearly stolen the design for his signs from former presidential candidate John McCain. But I’m going to guess McCain’s not going to be in Mississippi County anytime soon to complain.

I’m not going to say I would ever base my voting decision on the quality of a candidate’s yard signs, but I can tell you that I’ve been turned off a time or two in the past by less-than-professional yard signs. So far this year, however, most of the candidates are looking good.