Thursday begins the filing period for the primary election season.

While obviously this paper has done stories on a number of candidates already declared to run, from state House and Senate to county commissioners, expect a whole lot more partisan and municipal candidates to declare in the next couple of weeks. Filing period ends May 31. Then we’ll have a long sprint to Aug. 20 and Election Day. The nearly three months in between can be fun and informative or miserable for followers of local elections, depending on how well candidates behave.  So here’s one citizen’s request: Please keep the mud slinging to a minimum.

I’ve only been in the county since 2017, but that’s still plenty long enough to see a downgrade in the level of discourse between people on both sides of the aisle that has formed in the middle of the Republican Party.

There is plenty of space to have strong disagreements and tough critiques without resorting to personal attacks, falsehoods and name calling. Because of that, I’m not going to do any calling out any one individual in this editorial.

As someone who has always been on the other side of the notepad from political candidates, I respect all those who run for office, as it’s a cornerstone of our constitutional republic to have citizens step up to serve. And I appreciate the passion that candidates and elected officials have about certain issues — there are many things worth being passionate about.

I just hope this election season candidates can also be passionately pro civil discourse. As a wrestling parent, I always think of the end of a match when both winner and loser, no matter how tough the match was and how much they had just hurt each other trying to win, shake hands at the center of the circle.

Wouldn’t it be great to have that type of sportsmanship behavior out of our political candidates?