When you run for an elected office, you know one fact: Someone wins and someone loses. If you win, the joy and excitement is amazing. If you lose, well, not so much.
I lost my re-election bid for McHenry County Board. Actually, every Democratic female candidate in this county, except one, lost their races. It was brutal. Not the losing. No, it was the way we lost. The summer brought one calamity after another to our home. The campaign suffered. Still, the red sweep was overwhelming, and now we are left to pick up the pieces, heal our wounds, and figure out what's next.
And the blame has started, and it appears there's plenty to go around for everyone. The Republican win was not so much a mandate as it was a reaction. I was shocked. I believed we were better than this. I did not believe for one minute, even with all the bias, name-calling and fighting across the divide, that this country would elect a man so corrupt and morally unbound to the highest office in our country. Yet we aren't better than this, and it's disappointing this race was not about character or qualifications. It was about race and gender and who uses what bathroom. It was about people who are awake and those who want us to go back to sleep, to our own peril, until we heal the wounds embedded by our early colonizers. We get what we get.
So now friends, get ready, buckle up, because the circus has come to town, and we have a ringleader.
I'm Lou Ness, and that's my perspective.
