No blue wave, but white flags aplenty as the GOP dominates Floyd County in mid-term elections. Time yet for heads to roll?

Mr. and Mrs. Confidential returned from Gdansk on Tuesday evening just in time to listen to local election returns on WNAS.

It's one thing to mentally process a week overseas, especially in a locale with as much history (and such a vibrant present) as Gdansk. It's another to sort through the aftermath of a mid-term.

In addition, I'm delighted to be returning to actual work for the first time in a while, and two magazine articles for Food & Dining are scheduled to be written yesterday. The eight ball looms.

This is my way of a saying that it may take a while to catch up, so let's start with a few off-the-cuff observations about the local political scene.

• As for yesterday's local mid-term results, even if I seldom gloat: I TOLD YOU SO. There wasn't going to be a "blue wave" hereabouts. The Democratic Party has too much to do to rectify its internal contradictions, and the GOP is playing a hot hand right now.
• The 2019 municipal election cycle began at midnight. This is going to be fun.
• Floyd County Democrats are in their worst position in the city of New Albany in a generation -- maybe a lifetime. However, there's a new generation of useful local Democrats, if only they might be deployed properly. 
• They're not, so Adam Dickey immediately should offer his resignation as Floyd County Democratic Party Chairman.
• Dickey has presided over an escalating series of electoral disasters, and no human should be automatically gifted with ongoing tenure based on failure. Undoubtedly Dickey's resignation would be refused, because the party seems to believe it possesses no other subalterns capable of stepping into his shoes. However, we all might be surprised. They're actually there, just overshadowed by Dickey's staggering ineptitude.
• Jeff Gahan now is ascendant, and stands as the single greatest future hope for local Democratic relevance. He's also extremely vulnerable, but only if all his opponents, left and right, can manage to work together to defeat him. 
• EMPHATICALLY: This remains to be seen. 
• Congratulations to David Brewer, hitherto one of the least objectionable and most functional of Team Gahan's appointees. David needs to clarify one point immediately: Does he intend to remain in a salaried position as Building Commissioner and draw the township trustee's pay? 
• Bigger kudos to Shawn Carruthers, the county's first African-American commissioner and the highest-ranking African-American elected official locally since city councilman Bob Mitchell's departure in 1988.
• Carruthers defeated Jason Applegate. Both are quality individuals, and I was troubled not by Applegate's belated candidacy itself, but by the way Dickey crassly manipulated it as part of a (predictably failed) master strategy, first kneecapping LaMicra Martin's primary bid, then attaching Jason to the same old Gahan Money Machine donors who are this city's biggest problem, not our ultimate solution. 
• I'm also concerned about Extol Magazine's ambiguous role in all these maneuverings, which I consider a tad ill-conceived if not unethical; more on this another day.
• Jason is smart and sincere. He has a viable future in local politics if he wants it. My recommendation, worth almost nothing: Stay away from the local party's petty big-fish/little pond games and those troublesome big-bucks donors; rather, be independent in style, if not in party affiliation. Go to the grassroots, contest a council seat or some such, and do some good in the community.  

There are numerous omissions to the preceding. My brain's still back at the Baltic seaside.

Congratulations to all the candidates who put their names forward and ran for office -- and the ones who are about to. The next six months are going to be a wild ride, folks.