Why single out mayors for runoff elections?

Lewiston hasn’t even decided whether to swap its city manager system for a strong mayor.

Yet the current city council is in a rush to rewrite the rules.

Case in point: If voters make the change and then elect a mayor on Nov. 2 — a big if — the current council wants the city’s chief executive to win an outright majority of the votes. In a crowded field, that’s unlikely to happen, so they want the first- and second-place finishers to engage in a run-off election in December.

They’ll tell you that ensures that a consensus-based candidate will prevail over a fringe figure as the city’s new chief executive.

But what makes a mayor so special?

Anywhere else in Idaho, the candidate with the largest number of votes — majority or not, fringe or not — wins. All kinds of people in Idaho squeaked into office that way. Among them:

l Gov. Brad Little — In a seven-way GOP primary contest, he won with 37.3 percent.

l Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin — With the 2018 GOP vote split five ways, 28.9 percent was good enough for her.

l Congressman Russ Fulcher — In the 2018 Republican contest, he prevailed over six opponents with 43.1 percent. At least that’s better than Bill Sali, who went to Congress in 2006 after claiming just less than 26 percent of the six-way GOP primary contest.

l Secretary of State Lawerence Denney has his job thanks to the 37.1 percent sliver of the GOP primary he obtained in 2014.

l Sherri Ybarra is state superintendent of public instruction today because she secured 28.7 percent in the four-way GOP primary contest that same year.

Given Idaho’s lopsided politics, winning the GOP nomination is crucial. The general election campaign against Democrats tends to be an afterthought. But when Idaho’s politics were more competitive, it was not uncommon to see someone win the general election with less than 50 percent plus one. Democrat Cecil Andrus became Idaho governor by winning the 1986 campaign with 49.9 percent.

What do you get with a runoff?

More expense. Lewiston’s 2019 city election cost about $60,000. Double that with a runoff.

Fewer voters. Holidays and campaign fatigue winnow down the turnout to the hard core of city employees and ideologues.

Deja vu. The results rarely change.

Two years ago, Lauren McLean won 45.7 percent in the seven-way contest for Boise mayor. Forced into a runoff with the second-place winner, then-incumbent Mayor Dave Bieter, McLean went on to claim 65.5 percent a month later.

In Idaho Falls, Mayor Rebecca Casper was held to 47 percent of the vote against four challengers in November 2017. A month later, in a runoff against second-place winner Barbara Ehardt, Casper collected 61 percent.

The irony here — as Lewiston City Councilor John Bradbury noted — is that none of Lewiston’s current councilors claimed an outright majority. Last time out, eight candidates ran for three seats. Bradbury won with 23.6 percent as did Kevin Kelly with 17.77 percent followed by Cari Miller with 16.71 percent.

So what’s going on here? Are the councilors — most of whom oppose the idea of a strong mayor system — getting ahead of themselves? They wouldn’t be coming up with new arguments to discourage voters from making the change, would they? — M.T.