How Palm Beach County candidates can win hearts, minds

Palm Beach County voters have many good candidates from whom to choose in Tuesday's local elections.

We recently announced our endorsements for eight municipalities and one State Representative district. Making those selections involved our editorial board conducting half-hour virtual interviews of some 40 candidates and reviewing questionnaire responses, in addition to reading news articles on the candidates and their towns.

We thought you might like to know what makes a good candidate in our eyes, the qualities you might look for, to see through the sound bites and inflammatory mailers to make your picks, or, what skills you might develop if you were someday to consider a run for office.

Palm Beach Post endorsements: Palm Beach Post editorial board endorsements for March 8 municipal elections

Endorsements: Jervonte Edmonds for State Rep

Above all, we look for preparation, inspiration and disposition and at how each of those match the town's needs at this moment in its evolution.

We look for a candidate who knows the ins and outs of every important issue in a town, well enough to have informed opinions.

It's hard for someone other than an incumbent to come to this education, as many issues require more sophisticated knowledge than one might expect, whether of taxation, zoning, code enforcement or public safety. So, it's important to us that, before running for a top-level muncipal job such as mayor or city commissioner, one serve on at least one city board, whether the library board, planning and zoning or parks and rec, or on a nonprofit that interacts with the town government.

If you haven't put in that time and commitment or don't have comparable experience and you run against an incumbent who has had years to consider every issue, it will be hard to convince us you're prepared to shoulder responsibility for the thousands or tens of thousands of constituents you would serve.

What inspires a candidate to run also matters. Are you running because you don't have a full-time job and a couple of friends told you you'd make a great commissioner? Or, are you running because you would bring to the table the skills or focus on priorities the incumbent lacks? Are you proposing well-considered projects to make your municipality a world-class place to work and play or to lift residents out of poverty?

We also consider the context, the state of the town where a candidate wants to be a mayor or commissioner.

Is it run by experienced incumbents who have kept it in excellent financial shape while improving infrastructure, addressing traffic congestion and creating incentives for affordable housing construction? If so, an incumbent would have had to have done something pretty terrible to not merit another term.

Or, is your town poorly run, one that needs to replace commissioners like swapping out useless Scrabble tiles? Or, does it need someone willing to join a team of reformers on the board, rather than someone likely to vote with the folks who got the town into its current mess? In that case, we'd look for a candidate likely to stand up for change.

It's not that complicated: We look for a candidate who's smart, who does the right thing rather than play political games, who has spent time with and cares about town residents and businesses and who would position the town for greater social equity, livability and commercial success.

Speaking of political games, it's important to note that unseemly politics doesn't take place just at the national level. It happens here, too, and we recommend voters hold candidates who engage in it accountable.

The most common examples include campaign mailers that exaggerate opponents' supposed misdeeds rather than focus on a candidate's platform.

But other games are played, as well. This year in West Palm Beach, as has happened in the past, an incumbent stepped down at the last minute, so potential candidates who might have run had no time to jump into the race, except for the incumbent's favored replacement. To be sure, we endorsed the favored replacement because we considered her an exceptional candidate nonetheless — but also because there was no one else qualified from whom to choose.

Even more unsavory: the intrusion of anonymous money into local races. Beware shadowy candidates supported by secret givers.

But as we said up top, we're happy to report there are many strong candidates in Tuesday's races who have the smarts, experience and sensibilities to lift our communities. Get out and vote for them.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: How does the newspaper decide who to endorse in local elections?