You can have the right resume, an excellent pedigree, a great record of accomplishment, and you still don’t get elected. Politics isn’t fair. Oftentimes, it isn’t moral. The outcomes come and go depending on the place, time, candidate, or the other opponent making one more mistake than the winner.

Sometimes, though, a candidate doesn’t make any mistakes. Public sentiment drifts in a different direction.

I still remember the student council election for my senior year. A young lady, beautiful in spirit and form, let’s call her Patty, had served on the student council for our class for three years in a row. She did the hard work when no one was looking. She fundraised for the class programs. She attended the high school sports events. She was a good student, too.

When the race for senior class president rolled out, she was the lead contender. Then stepped in a relative nobody named Jenny. She was a nice girl, someone I had known from elementary school. She was quiet and unassuming, and she had never done anything major on campus. She never participated in extracurricular activities and never worked for any school cause. Come student council election day, Jenny won the Senior Class President. Patty quietly rushed to the student library (where I was studying at the time), and she just sobbed, “It’s not fair!” and crashed into her friend’s arms.

All her work meant nothing to the rest of the student body. Her pain still sticks out in my memory, and it underscores clearly how politics isn’t fair. 

At the end of it all, campaigning is an amoral quest to get the most votes. Sadly, sometimes the contenders lie, cheat, and steal to win. Even setting aside outright fraud, elections can turn up winners who don’t deserve the win on many levels.

That’s a lesson I wasn’t happy to relearn following last week’s California........

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