An election strategy that wasn't used

As I talk around town to people about the upcoming sheriff's race, I hear two names mentioned more often than the other two in a four person race and it made me think of an election strategy that could have been used but wasn't.

Being sheriff is a life-time position for most who get elected, staying on the job until they reach retirement age, so it's not like any of the current candidates can wait and run again later. Whoever wins this race will likely do what his or her predecessor did and many others like him and stay on the job for perhaps decades.

So that presented the bottom two candidates with an option I don't know if they considered, but if they didn't, they should have. They could have registered as an Independent or, God forbid, even a Democrat and bought themselves six more months to campaign and get their name and face better known to the public before the general election in November.

In addition to that, they would have had only one candidate to beat instead of three. It's logical to increase your odds of winning whenever you can and this would have been a way to do it.

But all four of the candidates filed as Republicans so the race will be decided in less than two weeks and the three who don't win won't likely have another chance.

So it boils down to the question of what's most important to them; to stay loyal to their political party of choice or to get elected. Granted, running on a ticket other than Republican certainly wouldn't have guaranteed that they would be elected but it would have considerably improved their chances.

Party loyalty is important to a lot of people as it is with me. My friend Dick Trail asked in one of his recent columns why I didn't change my party affiliation if I really wanted to vote for sheriff. I didn't because I've been a Democrat my whole life, I'm loyal to my party and I wouldn't betray that loyalty just to vote, even though I could re-register as a Democrat after I voted. So maybe the candidates feel just as strong about being Republicans as I do about being a Democrat.

On the other hand, there's a big difference between changing party affiliations just to be able to vote and changing in order to better your chances of being elected to an office you really want to hold and an office you can hold for as long as you desire if you're able to stay on the right side of public sentiment.

Once you're elected, people tend to forget your party affiliation anyway because you do nothing during the normal course of your work that's partisan. The sheriff serves all the people of the county equally and party affiliation never comes up when you're writing a ticket, making an arrest or serving a warrant, subpoena, or civil papers.

Six more months is a lifetime in an election cycle, less than two weeks is gone before you know it. That extra time would have done wonders for candidates who aren't known as well as the others or candidates who don't currently have enough support to get them elected.

It just might have given them enough time to beat one other candidate instead of three and be the newly elected sheriff of Red Willow County.