For the week of November 14 - 20, 2001

Come together

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Candidates who prevailed in last week’s election are calling on the various political camps to come together to work on the problems facing the valley’s cities.

The call should be heeded, but not without some reflection on the election just finished.

Some campaigns in Ketchum and Sun Valley turned nasty in their final weeks.

It was hard to tell whether candidates or their supporters were responsible for the background noise that included character assassination, machine politics the likes of which this valley has never seen before, and an astonishing level of misstatement of facts.

Done well, organized political campaigns educate voters and give candidates an edge in name and platform recognition.

At their worst, door to door campaigning, phone trees and cozy neighborhood chats can fuel unfounded fears and distort distinguished records. They can create irreparable damage between inhabitants of small towns who must manage to live together in the years after each city election.

Call us naïve, but we’d like to see a little less fury and a lot more fact in future campaigns. We’d like to see better discussion of positions on matters like parking, traffic, development, housing and the economy.

This time around voters heard a lot of candidates who ran on the "listening to the people" platform — whatever that is. They also heard a lot of vague allegations of things not being right in city governments. The local grapevine was hot with rumors that no one would claim as fact in public.

This is not to dismiss character as a valid consideration in selecting leaders. This is not to say that voters don’t have a right to change just for the sake of change.

Unfortunately, election fallout in small towns has a long half-life when campaigns stray from issues and devolve into raw underground power grabs.

Many residents in the valley have come from bigger places in the country where no-holds-barred campaigns are the norm, not the exception. This is one noxious weed that should not be allowed to take root here.

The valley’s newly elected city leaders have a great opportunity to take the high road. They should make sure the public’s business is done in public. They should support solutions that will ease the growing conflict between developers and drawbridgers.

Grinding old axes and nursing old grudges will not make the valley what everyone wants it to be: the best mountain valley on the planet in which to live and work.

It’s truly time to come together.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.