Bill Lee, the nice guy, won!

Congratulation to Bill Lee on a stunning upset victory in the Republican primary for governor last night.  I did not expect it. I did not vote for Diane Black but I expected her to win the nomination and she came in a distant third with only 23% of the vote. She started the race with much more name recognition than her opponents, got the endorsement of Vice President Mike Pence, and spend the most money. I assumed she would win.

Maybe last night's election results will make politicians rethink the wisdom of getting in the gutter and slinging mud. The wisdom is that politicians engage in dirty campaigning and attack ads because they work.  This time they didn't.  Diane Black was the worst offender by attacking her opponents over insignificant nit-picky stuff, such as that Boyd had not contributed to the Trump campaign and that Bill Lee gave a small amount of money to Democrat candidates such as Megan Barry in the past. She attacked both Lee and Black for being "moderate."  Diane Black started the attack ads but Boyd responded with attack ads of his own and also engaged in attack ads against Lee.  Lee, by contrast, never attacked back.

I voted for another candidate in this campaign although from the first I was supporting Black. I did not make up my mind in this race until the day before election day. The attack ad that caused me to finally decide I could not vote for Diane Black was when she exploited a situation in which Lee Company had to lay off someone who was in the military reserves. Reading the details of what really occurred, it seemed to me that Black crossed a line in dirty campaigning. The Lee Company did nothing wrong in that situation. I finally decided that Diane Black crossed a line and I just could not vote for her.

I know politics can be a dirty business. However, it doesn't have to be.  Lee's victory shows that you do not have to fight fire with fire. It shows you do not have to be as dirty as your opponent to win an election.  Lee's victory shows that nice guys do not always finish last. 

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