Op-Ed: This November, Let's Campaign With Respect

For roughly a hundred years, Coral Gables held its municipal elections in April, and most residents did not follow them. Turnout was low, in part because a spring election is easy to miss. That has changed. Now that our city elections are held in November alongside the general election, far more residents will be voting for our local candidates than ever before. And that makes one question more important than it has been in a long time: how are these campaigns being conducted?

Respect in a campaign is simple to describe. It means engaging your opponent civilly, on your political differences, rather than reaching for personal destruction or defamation. It means arguing about ideas, not tearing down a person.

Disrespect is not new to our politics. Campaigns have long carried attacks and misinformation, some of it direct and some of it subtle enough that most people never notice. That is the danger. Repeat something often enough, true or not, and a great many people will come to believe it.

So it is worth watching for candidates who manipulate how a situation looks when the reality is something else entirely. A few examples show how easily it is done.

A presidential candidate was once accused of cheating the IRS because he paid the capital-gains rate on his income. He had cheated no one. His income genuinely was capital gains, which the law taxes at a lower rate than wages, and what was sold as wrongdoing was the law working exactly as written.

A respected former Coral Gables official once told me that someone had taken a photo with them before becoming a candidate, then circulated that photo as though it were an endorsement. It was not. The official had endorsed no one.

A candidate in another South Florida city claimed their political party had backed them, when the only true thing was that they belonged to the same party. The party had backed no one.

And in recent years, right here at home, paid workers gathered petition signatures against our elected officials on false pretenses. Residents saw through it, and the tactic backfired at the next election.

We do have ethics rules, and Coral Gables asks more of its candidates than most cities do. Even so, some still cross the line.

I understand that we live in a polarized time. But I believe most voters want to return to a civil and constructive debate, because most candidates actually agree on the problems facing our city. Where they differ is in how they would solve them, and in the experience they would bring to the task. That is what deserves our attention. I would rather do a little research, look at what a candidate has supported and whom, and consider how their background and perspective would serve Coral Gables, than take a flyer’s word for any of it.

I will admit what turns me off: a mailer full of malicious, untrue attacks, or a story shaped by manipulation of the press. And I will admit one more thing. I entered this race myself before choosing to step away from it, so I am not asking for your vote. I am only asking that we hold the people who do seek it to a higher standard.

Because the question at the heart of all this is a fair one. If a candidate cannot be respectful while asking for your trust, why would you expect them to be respectful once in office? How do you trust someone to govern honestly when they lied and manipulated to get there?

I have lived and worked in Coral Gables for more than 50 years. I would love to see more respect in the city I love.