Collinsville's primary is over. Two candidates have been eliminated from the upcoming April municipal general election, one mayoral hopeful, Mark McCoy, and one council hopeful, Dan Hopkins. Only 8.8 percent of registered voters went to the polls, a not so uncommon practice in local primaries.
The small number of voters is interesting when contrasted to the regular, animated (often emotional) interest in city issues. Go to any store in Collinsville and you're sure to overhear conversation relating to something that's happening in town. A case can be made that Collinsville residents are paying attention and have formed strong opinions on many things. But, that does not translate into going to the polls. A puzzle.
A look at the actual votes, a couple of things stand out. Incumbent mayoral candidate, Stan Schaeffer received nearly double the votes of second place finisher, Joy Springer. Out of 21 precincts, Stan took all but 3. Springer took two and they tied in the third. Mark McCoy trailed behind in all, a reflection of his being a newcomer, an unknown quantity who had very little public visibility aside from a very informative website. What does this mean?
A case can be made that Collinsville is on its way. The 157 corridor is much improved with more exciting possibilities to come. Is there anyone who believes the old 157 was better? Many fight change, some don't want prettiness. Not long ago, a man asked me (in the grocery store) why Collinsville needed such a nice new bus station in downtown. Why did we have to have one that looked so good, surely we could have gotten by with a bare bones transportation center. That attitude is around, but it seems to be on the wane. Most residents want nice things, places they can point to with civic pride. Much of the improvements can be credited to the Paul Mann, the city's economic developer and a couple of very capable city managers who took the city by the scruff of the neck and jump started it. Add those people to an across the board excellence in city directors and police chief, Collinsville has more positives right now than negatives.
In the city council race, except for Liz Dalton who took a commanding lead after the primary, the candidates are pretty much in a horserace. Incumbent Jim Pulley who was in fourth place after the votes from Madison County were tallied, jumped to second place when the St. Clair County votes came in. Lisa Ciampoli and Raymond Otero fell back a bit in St. Clair but are still only a few votes behind Pulley. In the case of the council candidates, a look at precinct totals should tell them where they need to put their efforts between now and April.
The biggest hurdle for voters was the lack of publicity about this election. There was only bare bones reporting and no real back and forth among candidates over the issues. It seems it must be left for the internet to play these things out. The candidate forum put on by the League of Women Voters tried a new format this time and it left a huge gap in voter understanding. Although this forum is held in front of an audience of residents, it is a made for cable TV thing. The format left the television viewers with very little information except for the brief statements by each candidate. The more revealing points of view and differences between candidates was eliminated in favor of non televised, private conversations before the speeches.
A number of the candidates have web sites. I would hope they would use them more fully than they have up to now. If the papers and the forums won't get the differences out, they need to use what they have. They're all welcome to argue out their positions here as well.
