By Staff
Our View
This week, the Democratic national convention opened in Boston, Mass. and soon, the Republican national convention will open in New York.
These massive feasts of political fervor, once the place where parties hashed out their internal differences and launched their campaigns, are now made-for-TV spectacles.
They're intended to rally their supporters, rile the opposing party, and get one giant point across, "vote for us."
After these conventions you can be sure that the campaigns will begin in earnest, with attack ads on television and radio, telephone pollsters calling at dinnertime and even more unsolicited mail stuffed in our mailboxes.
There's really nothing quite like a presidential election.
Our own municipal elections in Atmore couldn't be more different. Sure, signs are popping up in yards around town supporting various candidates, but you'll not likely hear radio or see television ads from the candidates.
So too, you'll not likely see much in the way of attack ads coming from our local candidates. Surely no one will try throwing mud at the military service of our local candidates.
All in all, it will be a very low-key race. Sure, the NAACP has already interjected itself in this race, but even the group's press conference was a low-key affair, with little in the way of attendance or apparent reaction from the public.
The campaigning here will be the old-school, what some call, retail campaigning, meeting people personally, the candidates knocking on doors. In a small town, that's the way it should be.
We should be thankful that our local elections won't have the same rancor as national, state and even local races in neighboring cities. Whether you like a particular candidate or not, that's your decision, but we'll have enough mud slinging from the big elections to make us all feel like we need a shower.
Local candidates, don't throw mud just for the sake of throwing mud.
The Atmore Advance distributed questionnaires to municipal candidates this week. We'll have their answers shortly and publish those interviews in our local election guide in a future issue.