Ever seen an election from the candidates point of view?

Today I learned that one of my candidates for the Utah State House needed some help putting up door hangers on the homes of frequent voters. I had some time and so came to help. It was an eye opening experience to see the election from the candidates point of view.

He was trying to run a honest and fair campaign. But his opponent had just sent out some mailings with some negative and incorrect statements. He had to then make a choice. Should he not respond and risk having his opponent see that he will do nothing and so encourage her to do more negative ads. Or should he respond with a mailing with his own that attacks his opponent and risk looking like he is now running a negative campaign.

He did not want to go negative and I was impressed with how he responded. He did respond with what could appear as a negative mailing. But he held back from making it a purely negative mailing and instead pointed out some of his opponents ineffectiveness instead.

It must be hard to run for any office. You can be a person who tries to be an fair, honest and an ethical person. But when you run for office, people start saying lots of things about you and many times it is incorrect, false and even a blatant lie. Voters will hear this and regardless of its truth or not will believe it and and use it to decide who to vote for. But if you try to correct the lies you will either not be able to convince others of the truth, or worse. The lie was given just a few days before the election and you don't have any time correct the lie in time for the election.

We have seen this a lot lately here in Utah. 4 years ago a democrat in the county attorney general office suddenly decided to bring up charges against the republican county mayor, while the mayor was running for re-election. The charges were for something that happened over a year earlier, but for some reason, could only be brought up during an election year. The republican mayor lost her seat but was acquitted of all charges after the election. This year a democrat leaked to the press information that suggested that a republican had tried to bribe another legislator to vote a certain way. The republican demanded that the ethics committee investigate and decide well before the election on whether the charges are true or not. He was cleared, but was then left with very little time to get the word out that he was innocent.

This is not one sided, I'm sure republicans have done this to democrats too. But I do not know of any examples currently. But I have grown very tired of tricks like these to get elected. Many voters don't know much about local candidates and learn most of it from headlines only. Some candidates know this and spread untruths about their opponents that they know will make headlines and then influence voters. Because of this, it is very discouraging for an honest and fair person to want to run for office. We need good people, but because bad people do what they do, good people do not step up to serve.

This is a very good reason why I will never run for any office. I would not want anyone to spread falsehoods about me, my family, my beliefs or any other thing I hold dear.

But I was glad to be able to assist a good man in his election bid and I am hopeful that we will elect a good person to represent us.