Editorial: On City Council, the sheriff's race and negative ads

Thoughts from this week's primary election in West Virginia:

No results are final until after the county commissions review provisional ballots and certify results, but it looks like Huntington Mayor David Felinton held off a strong challenge from Cabell County Commissioner Bob Bailey, a longtime fixture on the local political scene.

We'll withhold comment on that race until after the results are certified, but voters must look beyond the mayor's office and ask what kind of city council they want.

City government has postponed action on several pressing problems. As the next four years pass, some of those problems will have to be addressed. The city's pension obligations and employee insurance costs show no signs of getting smaller. Rather, they are expected to grow larger. At current growth rates, they threaten the council's ability to enact a budget that would pay for the existing level of basic services, such as police, fire and streets.

The council elections could be every bit as important as the race for mayor. Many good candidates made it through the primary to the general election. Some did not. Voters must choose wisely among the candidates on the November ballot if they expect real answers to the city's most urgent problems.

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Cabell County voters will have a choice of two experienced law enforcement officers in November when they vote for sheriff. Tom McComas won the Democratic primary, while Jim Scheidler had no opposition in the Republican primary.

Voters could have chosen a candidate who was selling administrative skills as opposed to a law enforcement background, but voters made known they see the sheriff as a law officer first and an administrator second.

Given the changing nature of the crime problem in the area, that is totally understandable.

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A few weeks ago, Menis Ketchum, a Huntington lawyer running for the state Supreme Court, told The Herald-Dispatch editorial board that he did not want to run any negative ads against his opponents, but he had some ready to go in case one of his opponents did.

Soon after that, people in Cabell County received junk mail attacking Ketchum. On Election Day, Ketchum had a negative ad on local television attacking one of his opponents.

It can be argued who fired the first shot of negative advertising. What cannot be argued is that negative ads work, and candidates must have them in reserve. A candidate cannot go into an election without at least one negative ad ready to go. Voters say they don't like negative ads, but they respond well to them.

For what it's worth, Ketchum said the purpose of his "ketchup" and "mumbo jumbo" commercials was to get him name recognition in areas of the state where he might not be known. As Ketchum was one of two Democratic candidates to receive enough votes to move on to the general election, his strategy appears to have worked.