Elections Matter

This is a very strange election year.... only 2 filed to date for 2 open School Board seats, only 2 incumbents running for County Commissioner and only 2 incumbents running for Isanti City Council.... 

With all the comments, concerns and complaints I receive about these 3 levels of government and not a single competitive race out of the 3. Perhaps everyone is perfectly happy with everything going on in the County, School District and City Council.... There are good people in office and running to be sure but elections matter and the people we elect will be making decisions for the next 4 years. These are incredibly serious times and we need the best we can get to lead us into the future. Tuesday June 1st is last day to file.

I have added a few quotes as food for thought..... I begin with two of my favorites:

I offer my opponents a bargain:  if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.  ~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays,  instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."  Edmund Burke

          Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

                                   -- George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)

 

Take it from me--elections matter. 
-- Al Gore

Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.
-- Barack Obama

Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism.
-- Bill Moyers

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. 
Bill Vaughan 

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! ~Benjamin Franklin 

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.  ~Sydney J. Harris

Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.  ~Author Unknown

Our political institutions work remarkably well.  They are designed to clang against each other.  The noise is democracy at work.  ~Michael Novak

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work.  Of course it doesn't work.  We are supposed to work it.  ~Alexander Woollcott

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people.  Of course, that is not true.  Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.  ~Walter H. Judd

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.  ~Richard Armour

George Washington is the only president who didn't blame the previous administration for his troubles.  ~Author Unknown

Truth is not determined by majority vote.  ~Doug Gwyn

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.  ~Charles Krauthammer

I offer my opponents a bargain:  if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.  ~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952