Let's have a clean fight, candidates

Even before that last weathered McCain sign is gone from the landscape and just as sure as daffodils bloom in the spring, you'll soon see a fresh crop of campaign signs.

And they're due to sprout any day now.

The floodgates of Illinois' election filing period opened this week, disgorging thousands of local candidates hungry for your votes.

And judging by the number of contested mayoral races alone, this election will be spirited.

In Carpentersville, East Dundee, Fox River Grove, Aurora, Lombard, Villa Park, Gurnee, Fox Lake and Bartlett, three candidates have opted to run for their town's highest office.

In East Dundee, that's one candidate for every 1,000 residents.

And there are four candidates for mayor in Winfield, Wauconda, Des Plaines and maybe Wheeling.

There are a lot of voices crying out for your support. And too often in the effort to stand out among the din, candidates in contests federal, state, county and local lose perspective and do dumb things.

"Saturday Night Live" recently lampooned Barack Obama - affectionately - in the genre of a 1960s jazz-album inspired hip cat, where "I'm cool" was his constant refrain.

That, after all, is in part what got him elected President. Where John McCain was sometimes shrill and hurried during the campaign, Obama was cool and measured.

Learn from this, future leaders of the suburbs.

Keep your cool. Build your case for election rather than tearing down your competitors. Don't resort to name calling. And resist the temptation to sacrifice your integrity and dignity to win.

Let's have a good, clean fight.

It's inspiring to see such a strong turnout of candidates. We imagine it's a combination of the afterglow of the election just passed, an interest in giving back to the community and a desire to right the ship in communities where revenue streams have been reduced to a trickle and layoffs and budget cuts loom.

Whatever your inspiration, remember who you'll be working for: the taxpayers.

We already have seen a monumental lapse of judgment in a township race.

In his nine years as Dundee Township's highway commissioner, Larry Braasch has done an exemplary job of maintaining the roads.

So why would Braasch put his name and title in letters more than a foot tall across the side of the township's big equipment shed along busy Route 72 in Sleepy Hollow? And why right at election time?

Braasch did get permission from the village to put up the sign, and it doesn't break election law because it doesn't actually instruct those who see it to vote for him. But that garage was completed last summer. And Braasch's explanation that he wanted to differentiate his garage from the fancy fire station next door rings hollow.

He didn't need to do this to win re-election.

Let's all learn from his mistake.