The election process surrounding the city council’s selection of Attorney Dan Cortell as the District 8 councillor was a great success.
The city council, led by its able president Leo Robinson, made the process pristine and absent of the kind of regressive quid pro quo politics that used to dominate this city in the decades and years leading to receivership.
All the candidates thanked the council for its fairness. All the candidates felt they had a chance to win. And having that kind of condition met in a political forum is not always achieved.
But it was achieved here, by the city councillors remaining conspicuously open minded and for the most part unaffiliated.
Mind you, the voting had to begin somewhere and so councillors made choices that they knew would only last one or two ballots before a consensus candidate appeared.
That candidate was the winner, Dan Cortell.
The other winners in the room were the councillors, who acted with dignity, intelligence and respect as they went about the task of electing the District 8 councillor.