I cast my ballot for mayor on Monday, the day I received the ballot in the mail. Three weeks from now we’ll find out the results of our town’s election.

Along with trust, collaboration, and good governance, the other word I have been featuring in my campaign for mayor of Lyons, Colorado is civility. Its loss in American discourse is profoundly disconcerting.

When I was in college, my vocal band booked a gig at a large men’s conference in the heart of the Ozark mountains. I had read a monthly newsletter from the conference that included alarming lines about starving children in Biafra. I could not believe what I had read. At the conference there was an abundance of workshops about the dangers of Communism, references to the John Birch Society, and other subjects I found alarming.

These might have been well-meaning people, but you could have powered a small city with the negative energy of their misplaced confidence. It was McCarthyism kept alive in the guise of Christian fundamentalism. I was very grateful that most environments in which I lived at the time were not inhabited by such toxic certainty.

When the conference ended and I returned home, I remember going to the radio station where I worked and telling our chief engineer what I had heard. The engineer, Bill, had grown up on Staten Island and traveled the world before settling in Appalachia. He said, “Ninety-nine percent of the evil in the world is done by people who are 100 percent convinced they are right.”

His words stuck with me. I later heard M. Scott Peck say the same thing. In the years since that time, I have come to realize that the beginnings of incivility are when lack of curiosity is combined with confident certainty. The result is toxicity.

There is nothing new about today’s incivility. A cursory look at American history will find it in every decade of our 250 year existence. But it is worse today than it has been at any time since the McCarthy era. What I saw in the Ozark mountains has now permeated much of the nation, and it saddens me greatly.

That is why I am so encouraged with the civility I’ve seen in the race for mayor of Lyons, Colorado. I was talking with the other candidate after our town board meeting on Monday evening. We both have had to remind a person or two that there will be no attacks in this race, but for the most part no one has even suggested writing pejorative things about the other candidate. Most people in this town want to be civil toward one another. Mark, my opponent, and I are both campaigning on what we believe to be our unique strengths, not the weaknesses of the other. That is as it should be.

The same is true for the nine people running for six open board of trustee seats. There has been no name-calling, just civility and respect. Each of our candidate forums have been great examples of civility, sticking to issues, not personalities. Even social media has been pretty civil.

No matter who wins a seat on the Board of Trustees or the race for Mayor of Lyons, I believe the Town of Lyons will be the winner of this race. It makes me proud to live here, and to serve as Mayor Pro Tem.

Lack of curiosity and confident certainty leads to arrogance, incivility, and toxicity. Curiosity, coupled with humility, leads to good government. I am proud to live in a town committed to good government.

Running for office is a bit weird. When you grow up as an evangelical you are told that self-promotion is wrong – always. Ambition is anathema. Never mind the ambition of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. Apparently they had a special dispensation from the gods to be ambitious. The message to me was clear, I did not have a special dispensation from the gods. I was to be self-effacing, never even whispering to others what my abilities might be.

I’m not sure how you can run for office without promoting yourself. I made a video for my current run for mayor this week. It’s about 90 seconds long and I talked about what I’d like to accomplish as mayor. I also talked about my credentials. I noted that I’ve chaired a lot of boards, including the board of a television network. (Can’t say I enjoyed that one, though I did really like both CEOs I worked with.)

I think I joined my first board, a small Christian college in upstate New York, when I was 29. I remember two elderly gentlemen, probably around 65, took me under their wings and guided my development. I remember thinking they were so, so old. Now I’m ten years older than they were!

I am a big believer in Carver Policy Governance. We utilized Carver Policy Governance back when I was a CEO. The board determined the big rocks to be moved. The staff figured out how to move the rocks and then proceeded to move them. The CEO (me) was held accountable for moving the rocks. The board was responsible for keeping itself in line. It worked well for 35 years.

Back in 2018 we did not start Left Hand Church that way. I was in a new gender, sensitive to criticisms of the patriarchy and willing to try new approaches. They didn’t work. Good to know. I’m back to believing in Carver Policy Governance.

My opponent is a good guy – a person of character, though he can be a bit gruff occasionally. We sit next to each other in board meetings. He’s a board member, I’m Mayor Pro Tem. We usually agree on what the big issues are and vote together probably 80 percent of the time. The difference is in governance style. He likes to get down in the weeds. I don’t think getting in the weeds is our job. That’s the staff’s job.

In our candidate forums I talk about governance. He talks about preferred approaches to specific tasks. I talk about civility, trust, collaboration, and good governance because, well, I think those are really important, particularly in today’s world.

There’s been no mud-slinging in our campaign. There won’t be. First, there hasn’t been enough moisture around here to even make mud this winter. We’d be slinging dust, not mud. Second, neither of us is particularly adept at slinging dust or mud.

We agreed not to use yard signs. They are not recyclable and anyway, both of us feel they are a little ostentatious. I’ll be okay if he wins. He’s a good guy and he’d do a decent job. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me. It feels to me like the election could go either way.

So many political contests lack basic civility. One of my friends won her race for mayor this past year, but oh my, what she had to put up with from her opponent!

A couple of folks from out of town made a presentation to our town board last Monday. Afterwards they said, “You guys are punching above your weight.” We hear that a lot in Lyons. We are a small town, but everybody in the state knows Lyons, and a lot of people would love to live here, if they could afford it. (That’s a whole different conversation.) We also have a good board and staff, decent folk who respect one another and disagree often and sometimes loudly, but then go for dinner afterwards. I’m pretty sure that’s what a democracy is supposed to look like.

This is the third time I’ve run for office. It’s always uncomfortable. Anybody who says their ego isn’t bruised when they lose is lying. Being mayor is a lot of work and it pays almost nothing, $700 a month in our town. That’s what I earned when I graduated from college and got my first full-time job in 1973. But you don’t do the job for the money, or for the accolades. There aren’t many. You do it because you feel called. The election is April 7. I’ll let you know what happens.

And so it goes.