Politics is often perceived to be a rough and tumble world.
Historically and locally, that's been true at times. Last week's doings over a Gahler for Harford County Sheriff sign were a throwback to more primitive times.
In a nutshell, someone put up a Gahler sign and someone took it down. The one who put it up got furious, found out who took it down and there was a confrontation between the two.
The rest of the details we'll leave to the police and the courts to sort out, except to say a razor knife was pulled to end the dispute and someone wound up cut, according to police.
We approach each election year with a certain amount of dread. We not only fear the monumental task of covering each race and each candidate as accurately, completely and fairly as possible, but also we fear addressing some of the shenanigans that invariably happen. There are many dirty tricks pulled in any one race in any given year, some have an impact, some don't. Some we hear about, some we don't.
One of the most frequently pulled, and the most childish, is the removal of campaign signs. Every year, there's a campaign that does what it can to keep the opposition putting up signs to replace the ones that had been put up, only to have someone surreptitiously remove them. Often times, people are found out, or at least another's campaign is strongly suspected. Far less frequently, angry words are hurled, but in these somewhat modern times, violent exchanges are more and more unheard of. Until last week, that is.
It's still a couple of months away from the start of 2014 when the next election year begins, but as they say, "the fighting has begun."
Here's hoping that the fight over the missing Gahler sign is the last fight in the battles leading to the election.