{"id":12891,"date":"2016-02-12T20:37:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T20:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12891"},"modified":"2016-02-12T20:49:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T20:49:34","slug":"next-to-zero-interest-in-politics-perhaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12891","title":{"rendered":"Next to zero interest in politics? Perhaps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"horse<\/a><\/p>\n

Incumbent officeholders hate it when I say this, but that’s too bad. I’ll keep saying it.<\/p>\n

Hardly ever do they deserve a free ride to re-election. However, that’s what happens with mind-numbing regularity in many of our local communities.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at Randall County, for an example.<\/p>\n

I mailer came to my house this week. It’s from Paula Hicks, who’s running for the Precinct 4 constable seat occupied by Chris Johnson. She points out that her\u00a0race is the only contested one in the county.<\/p>\n

Wouldn’t you know it. The only contested\u00a0race in the county where I live\u00a0involves the one office I care next to nothing about. We shouldn’t even have<\/em>\u00a0constables in Randall County, but we do and this year the\u00a0office is being contested.<\/p>\n

What about the rest of the\u00a0county offices? They’re all uncontested. Even the tax assessor-collector’s office, which is\u00a0being vacated by a long-time incumbent, Sharon Hollingsworth,\u00a0doesn’t have a contested race.<\/p>\n

Why don’t candidates\u00a0jump in? Why don’t incumbents get challenged by those who think they can\u00a0do a better job?<\/p>\n

Are they happy with the job being done? Don’t they want\u00a0the publicity that goes with seeking public office?\u00a0Do they fear offending someone?<\/p>\n

That isn’t the case north of the county line, in Potter County?<\/p>\n

The county attorney, Scott Brumley, has a challenger; the 47th District attorney, Randall Sims,\u00a0has one too. A county commissioner, Leon Church in Precinct 3, is getting a challenge.<\/p>\n

But that’s it. Just three incumbents from the entire slate\u00a0of candidates have to\u00a0fight to keep their office.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I want all the incumbents to get tossed out on their ears. It’s just that I’ve long thought that incumbents build a public record and they ought to face demands that they defend those records.<\/p>\n

The past few Amarillo municipal elections have been lively affairs. This past year saw two incumbent City Council members defeated and a third newcomer elected to a seat that had been vacated. I wasn’t happy with the outcome, but I did enjoy listening to the community debate.<\/p>\n

Challengers who rise up from the masses need not be negative. They merely need to say how they intend to perform the duties differently from the individual who’s already in the office. Better? Sure.<\/p>\n

I get that incumbents don’t like hearing that from folks like me. They think\u00a0I sit out here in the peanut gallery just relishing the chance to toss\u00a0the proverbial rotten tomato at them.<\/p>\n

Not true. I just like a robust debate. Especially at the local level, where government — and the people who\u00a0we choose to run\u00a0it — make decisions that affect our lives most directly.<\/p>\n

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Incumbent officeholders hate it when I say this, but that’s too bad. I’ll keep saying it. Hardly ever do they deserve a free ride to re-election. However, that’s what happens with mind-numbing regularity in many of our local communities. Let’s look at Randall County, for an example. I mailer came to my house this week. … Continue reading Next to zero interest in politics? Perhaps<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[87,288,1137,3677,3823],"class_list":["post-12891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-47th-district-attorney","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-constables","tag-potter-county","tag-randall-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12891"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12900,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12891\/revisions\/12900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}