Biggest election winner and other stuff

Scratching beneath the surface for election nuggets …

• The biggest victory of the night could arguably have gone to Coeur d’Alene Mayor-elect Jim Hammond. Or maybe to Hayden councilman-elect Ed DePriest. Then again, CDA school board chair Rebecca Smith’s re-election might represent the biggest victory.

But our vote? The biggest victory in the county was the defeat of David Reilly, a wholly unsuitable candidate who’d sought a seat on the Post Falls School Board.

• Speaking of CDA mayor, Hammond won with one of the cleanest, most positive campaigns this fall. He never stooped to the levels of his chief opponent, who unwisely adopted the slogan, “Because it’s time to take the trash out.”

• Two CDA candidates who were not successful but gained admiration points were Elaine Price and Roger Garlock. The City Council contestants also ran clean, respectful campaigns and were always open to civil discussion — again, a departure from some of their colleagues.

The new normal with some of the extreme candidates is to not be accountable to the public, a phenomenon seen by certain NIC trustees who refuse to answer phone calls or emails from reporters. The citizens they allegedly represent deserve far better than that.

• Other than David Reilly’s unwelcome foray into local politics after living here all of one year, another low point was publication and distribution of a malicious, horrifically misinformed tabloid called The People’s Pen. We have dubbed the local GOP love child The Poison Pen.

Here are a few tidbits about the rag:

• Some Press subscribers complained because it was delivered inside their Press. Trust us: That was done by a carrier or carriers violating terms of their contract. The Press has nothing to do with The Poison Pen, which incidentally offers no clues as to its owners.

• It does offer clear clues as to its supporters. Those few advertisers were called out in a Press letter to the editor Wednesday, with the writer suggesting rational, constructive citizens go out of their way to not do business with The Poison Pen’s advertisers.

• However, we’d like to clear up one point of confusion. An ad for a “Patriot Business Meetup” was promoted as taking place monthly at Keller Williams Realty. Instead, the group has changed to a new location.

• Is the voter turnout glass one-third full or two-thirds empty? On Tuesday, 34,950 ballots were counted, 35.3 percent of the 99,137 voters who had registered. That’s a big number for a local election, so cheers to the one-third full fans.

On the other hand, two-thirds of registered voters couldn’t be bothered to cast ballots. Candidates who won (and those who lost, too) might keep in mind that all those close races still represented anything but an ultimatum from the community.