Lowe Wins Nail-Biter for Gainesville Mayor

Yesterday the runoff election for Gainesville's mayor was held. The contenders were sitting city commissioner Craig Lowe on the liberal side and repeat contender Dan Marsh on the conservative side. Usually, city-wide elections in Gainesville tend to favor the liberals by about a 57-43 percent margin, but last night's results were telling: Lowe beat Marsh with only a 35 vote margin, 6098 to 6063, automatically setting in motion a required recount this Friday. Why so close?

Dan Marsh has been an unapologetic panderer to the tea party movement that has infected this country as self-righteous, holier-than-thou people angry at our democracy for electing "foreign, Muslim, socialist, terrorist, grandma killer (and black)" Barack Obama as president try to shout down the 2008 results. I find this movement personally repulsive, very reactionary, and rooted in prejudice and irrational fear. Now combine this with the revelation that Commissioner Lowe is gay (not that he ever made an issue out of that fact) and we suddenly see certain people becoming energized with an opportunity to make their homophobia and paranoia count for something besides hot air. And voila...we end up with this nail-biter of an election result. These things can happen when you have only a 16% voter turnout: a mobilized section of the electorate can rise up and drastically affect the results.

I don't particularly like Craig Lowe myself. He comes across to me as a self-important, condescending elitist, something I don't dig in my elected public servants. On the other hand, I couldn't care less about his sexual orientation one way or another. His opponent essentially campaigned on it, though, making this the dirtiest mayoral campaign yet in our sometimes not-so-fair city. Hopefully, the recount results will confirm Lowe as the winner.