An old farm friend had a saying for every occasion. When he could put a chore off no longer, it was “nut-cuttin’ time.”
That’s where we are with this year’s election, nationally and very much in Kansas and Allen County.
We’ve all heard supporters tell how good one candidate is, why we should vote for him or her, why the opponent doesn’t measure up. Campaign signs are everywhere. Knocks come on doors and we’re greeted with knob-hangers. Our mailboxes are filled with slick flyers that paint one candidate as a paragon of virtue, the opponent as an emissary of the devil.
Advance voting now is available, although most folks will wait until Nov. 8. With the most contentious presidential election in decades the centerpiece, the turnout will be huge. Or not; maybe acrimony has soured voters. Let’s hope not.
An outcome we can cherish is if voters flock to a forum Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Iola High’s lecture hall.
A tenet of democracy is to patiently listen, learn and vote your convictions, rather than seize a single issue — the Second Amendment, for example — and let it be the sole driver. We should judge a candidate on a broad spectrum. That’s how our lives are lived. In a single day many things enter into our 24-hour march through time.
Wednesday evening two races will intrigue local voters: incumbent Bryan Murphey vs. Mike Aronson, for sheriff; incumbent Caryn Tyson vs. Carla Griffith, for state senator.
A remarkable adjunct to each is their non-traditional aspects. Aronson filed as an independent by petition on the day before the primary election, in which Murphy bested two Republican challengers. Griffith has a Herculean challenge as a write-in candidate in her effort to unseat Tyson. Griffith has doggedly campaigned and in recent days seems to have acquired name recognition that was missing early on.
In both races voters will decide who will hold sway the next four years, and both positions are important to what occurs in Allen County.
The sheriff oversees administration of law enforcement in the county. The senator will help decide the course of Kansas, hopefully along an avenue that will extract us from the dreadful morass of economic despair that’s constantly nagging. Its resolution is important to our future — very much including our children and their educations.
