Sad trend

EDITORIAL

Were Rockdale residents more concerned about our town in 1978?

The classic scene from the movie “Crocodile Dundee” came when the Australian-transplant croc chaser was accosted in a New York City alley by a knife-brandishing mugger. Dundee looks at the blade, smiles and says “you call that a knoife, mate?” Then he hauls out the Aussie version, with a blade almost the size of a machete. “Now, that’s a knoife!” We are about to have a city-school election in Rockdale with early voting starting later this month. Elsewhere on this page you can read about the election Rockdale had 40 years ago. Now, that’s an election! It set the all-time record for voter turnout for city and school, 1,550 for the Rockdale ISD and 1,454 for the city. A later bond election eclipsed that total for the school. City is still the record. That 40-year-ago election featured adoption of our town’s first-ever city charter. A new charter replaced it in an election two years ago. One thousand two hundred and ninety-three people voted in the 1978 charter election. One hundred fifty-six voted in 2016. That’s one-eighth the 1978 vote. Did the word get out about the 2016 charter vote? You might say it did. The entire charter was printed in The Rockdale Reporter. Twice. Was the 1978 election just a one-of-a-kind outlier? Between 1977 and 1984—taking the highest of either city or school totals each year—the average turnout in Rockdale was 1,243. And that includes the 1979 election where there were no contested races for the city or school. It would be canceled today. During that period, three candidates, Margie Abbott in the city and Jerry Kirk and Don Rod-dam in the school—polled over 1,000 votes. In the past two decades only one city or school candidate has received even half that amount of votes. John Shoemake drew 594 in winning the mayor’s post in 2004. What’s happened? The obvious answer is that there were big issues back then as Rockdale picked its leaders. Guess what? There have been big issues over the past couple of decades, too, and there are big issues now. Times have changed. Our voting patterns reflect that. Until times change again, reflect on one more interesting nugget. In that 1978 school board race there were four candidates vying for some unexpired terms. The candidate who placed last—that’s last—drew 380 votes. That 380 votes would have won any Rockdale political race since 2004.—M.B.