Later this week, your ballot for the Oregon Primary Election on May 15 should be in your mailbox. Your voters’ pamphlet should have already arrived.

Election season is always an interesting time at a newspaper. It’s one of the few times out of the year people count words to make sure they haven’t been given short shrift. Don’t laugh. It happened two weeks ago.

We haven’t had any extremely heated races, which is good. I guess we’ll never come close to the level of animosity that exists at the state or national level, and I am thankful for that.

A history professor acquaintance of mine reminded me recently that snarky politics is a time-honored American tradition. Remember the Hamilton-Burr duel fought between Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the former secretary of the treasury?

Yeah that was one way of settling things permanently back then. Today it’s mostly verbal fisticuffs or what is commonly known as “negative advertising.”

Most people believe political campaigning is more negative and mud-slung than ever. The history of negative campaigning reaches back to the earliest days. Gossip and scandal make news in the minds of many.

While experts agree that negative campaign ads are more easily remembered, it is unclear whether candidates who run negative ads are more likely to win.

Remember Willie Horton and Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988? Bush won. Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry in 2004? Bush won.

American are always quick to say they hate negative campaigning, yet it works its way into their psyche. Believe me, if it didn’t work, no candidate alive would pour hundreds of millions of dollars into it.

In my years as a newspaper editor, I have only been involved in a handful of local elections that turned nasty. One city council race consisted of a sitting council member and a challenger who was the former city administrator who had been fired but stayed in the city. He knew where all the bones were buried and wasn’t afraid to use what he knew.

He won in a squeaker but was roundly and openly heckled at city council meetings. Always had the camera ready during those events. I always thought someone should have stood before this council meeting and announced … “and in this corner …”

I remember another county election where one candidate called his opponent a pissant. “What’s that,” he yelled across the dais at a candidate forum to uproarious laughter from the audience.

That spoke volumes about his intelligence. He lost.

In Wallowa County, it seems, no matter who is elected to what, the venom is mostly conserved to spit at the power on the western side of the state that tend to control our fate much too often.

Winston Churchill is usually credited with the saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Perhaps that’s how Wallowa County folks think about it.

And now a last-minute reminder that the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce’s candidate and ballot measure forum is tonight at 6 p.m. at Coverleaf Hall in Enterprise. This is a great chance to get your election fix for 2018.