More thoughts on Salisbury's Primary Election

Written by William Duck and originally posted on DuckAround.

Jim Ireton won, and won big Tuesday night in the primary of the Salisbury mayoral race. Disclosure: I volunteered on a couple of occasions and made a bunch of phone calls Tuesday for Jim.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at what we know from the results, what’s reasonable to extrapolate from the data, and what comes next.

First, the raw numbers:
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Registered Voters 12557 - Cards Cast 1394 - 11.10%
Total Votes - 2053

Robert Caldwell - 522 / 25.43%
Gary A. Comegys - 560 / 27.28%
Michael Della Penna - 132 / 6.43%
Jim Ireton - 839 / 40.87%

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A few reminders about Salisbury's primary process:
* It is a non-partisan primary - no one has party affiliations next to their names.
* Each voter can select two candidates, but it not mandated to - if you desire, you can vote for just one.
* Voters cannot give both votes to just one candidate. You can vote for one, you can vote for two, but you can't vote for one twice.
*Top two candidates proceed to the general election, conveniently held a month later, April 7.

WHAT WE KNOW:
Jim Ireton will proceed to the general election with 40% of the cumulative vote total.

Gary Comegys currently holds a 38 vote lead over Robert Caldwell for the second and last spot on the general election ballot.

Absentee ballots will be counted Thursday. There are 149 to be counted. Those voters may have voted for one or two mayoral candidates, and there's no way of knowing until they are physically counted Thursday. We may have an additional 149 votes or an additional 398 votes. If they break the way the general did, about 60% will vote for one candidate only, and the remaining 40% will have voted for two. In either case, some, and probably a majority, of those ballots will be marked for Jim Ireton, either alone or in additional to Caldwell and Comegys.

WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW:
Gary Comegys should, but may not, advance as the second candidate. Since there's only a 38-vote difference, it's possible, though not probable, Robert Caldwell could pass him. But I'd rather be Gary Comegys than Robert Caldwell going into the absentee ballot count.

As Joe Albero, some of the math from Tuesday isn't heartening for Gary Comegys. There were 1394 voters in the election casting a total of 2,053 votes. That means, as Joe points out, that 738 people cast just one vote for mayor. And that's more than half the people who voted.

WHAT WE CAN GUESS:
Jim's 13 percentage point victory is a problem for Gary Comegys, no matter how he chooses to spin it. Even if you take the favorite theory of Comegys' apologists - that his people just voted for Comegys while Ireton piggybacked on outsider support for Caldwell along with Ireton's base - the numbers don't work for Comegys. Those "Caldwell and Ireton, too" votes would have to break somewhere on the order of 65/35 in favor of Comegys for him to overtake Jim Ireton. And I can't foresee a circumstance where Comegys picks up a substantial amount of Caldwell supporters, let alone two-thirds of them. If they were voting for Caldwell, and adding Ireton as a message or a second thought, they aren't going to suddenly switch to the government incumbent.

A vote for Caldwell was a vote against the status quo, and the status quo is exactly what Gary Comegys represents and wants to continue. If he wants to run on his record, there will be some very happy people running the Jim Ireton campaign.

QUESTIONS THAT ARE LEFT:
Does Gary Comegys go negative? Some of his supporters certainly are. Just browse the comments on delmarvanow.com and other local blogs. Some of the stuff is vile, and most importantly, irrelevant. I won't even validate the smears by repeating them here. It may indeed get worse. I wouldn't read the Grapevine on delmarvanow.com if you're squeamish until after the election. And you might want to wait an additional week.

Does Gary Comegys run on his own record, or against the 16 months Jim Ireton served on the City Council 10 years ago? He's kind of between a rock and a hard place - if he harps on Ireton's votes from a time when Clinton was still president, he's wallowing in the past. If he runs on his own record, he's opening himself to charges of being beholden to landlords and other special interests with the evidence being contained in his comments and votes while on the City Council. Don't be surprised if he tried to wage a campaign focused on Jim Ireton 10 years ago instead of Salisbury 10 years from now.

How does Jim Ireton deal with his time on the council? The facts are there - he was elected, and well short of the end of his term, he resigned and moved. Now he's back, and wants to be mayor. People are going to have tough questions he needs to be able to answer.

Is The Daily Times guilty of bias? More disclosure - I worked for The Daily Times as a reporter and editor for 3.5 years back in the early 1990s, and enjoy good personal relationships with Erick Sahler, Managing Editor, and Greg Bassett, Managing Editor. They were great co-workers, and have been great professionals in all my dealings with them since I left. I've called concerning stories on my Wi-Hi Wrestling Team and also when I worked on the campaign to reject the 2000 Revenue Cap proposal.

But I am left wondering after looking over some of the coverage in the last week. Politicians always complain they aren't treated fairly, so I was pretty cynical. But here's a few quotes from stories the last week that made me say "Huh? Really?"

From the Voter's Guide on Sunday, questionable phrasings in bold and italic:

"Ireton, 39, has been a teacher on and off for 17 years. He taught at St. Francis de Sales School in Salisbury from 1993-97 and at Northwestern Elementary in Mardela Springs from 1997-99. He served 17 months on the Salisbury City Council from April 1998 to August 1999 before quitting and taking odd jobs with Alternative Resources Corp. in Linthicum, Md., then came back to Salisbury to work at WBOC-TV for the remainder of 1999. From 2000-2004, he started a master's program at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and taught at Mount Royal Elementary/ Middle in Baltimore, then taught the next two years at Medfield Heights Elementary in Baltimore. He returned to the Lower Shore in 2006, teaching for two years at East Salisbury Elementary. His current place of employment is Westside Intermediate. Ireton is active in the Democratic Club and is chairman of the Wicomico Neighborhood Congress and a member of the city of Salisbury Recycling Committee."

Really, he's taught for the vast majority of those 17 years. Government officials traditionaly resign, not quit. And I have no idea why the writer used "taking odd jobs" as a description of his work in Linthicum. And why not note Jim's finished his master's degree, instead of just saying he started it? And he's a teacher at Westside Intermediate. Current place of employment? What's that's about?

And from the article concerning Tuesday's results:

SALISBURY -- Former councilman Jim Ireton made it through the city primary Tuesday by a landslide vote, more than 300 ahead of City Council Vice President Gary Comegys.

Comegys said he was still delighted to get the support he did.

"I'm going to work extra hard between now and the general election to win this," he said.

Ireton gave a confident speech to a captive audience at Flavors of Italy on Main Street.

"I'm going to be the next mayor," he said.

Well, Jim said a lot more than that, but that's a great quote for a reporter. But "made it through"? How about, oh, I don't know, WON? There's a pretty short way of saying what Jim Ireton did Tuesday.

But, more importantly to me, why does the man who just got beaten by 13 percentage points get the first quote? Everything I learned at the University of Maryland's Journalism school says most important first, then give facts in descending order of importance. So Gary Comgey's reaction is more important the the man who garnered 13 percent more votes?

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but there's a case to be made there's a pattern developing.

[TWO SENTZ Edit: If Jim got 839 votes and Gary got 560 votes and 839 - 560 = 279, then why did the reporter say "more than 300 ahead of City Council Vice President Gary Comegys." That's just plain embarrassing.]