Editor’s Note: This column was submitted several days before the Oct. 7 runoff election.

Congratulations, Mr. Mayor. You won a small campaign, in our very special small town, and, you won it “fair and square.” You should be inaugurated soon to serve as the next chief executive of the Fairhope experiment. It can be a noble job, and the residents owe you many thanks for being willing to stand in the ring. Some believe that to be a modern politician, the candidate has to be either a megalomaniac, a scoundrel, or a true steward of the electorate. Let’s all pray that you will become the steward that we need.

The past few weeks of the campaign seemed to be very quiet, with only a few public skirmishes. Most of the last days of the fight, as you well know, were fought over the phone lines, through anonymous e-mails, or in strategic gossip. We started with a fair hope for a transparent discourse that devolved to blogged character assassinations in the night, with new corpses thrown in the street each morning.

The combatants, seven of you to start, stood before us in your awkward political uniforms and talked about a clean campaign. The residents hoped that you could carry your own message and make your own arguments. We hoped the blood you wanted to shed would be your own, and that the blood would stay in the ring. Well, that’s not the election we got, was it?

Accountability was one of the themes of this election, and maybe the first thing that you and your opponent should do is to hold yourselves fully accountable for all the damage your forces have done to the delicate fabric of our village. Let’s fly above our once sweet, now smoking town for a moment to assess the battleground. Let’s look at the cratered world you both have created and look at the world that is all yours now.

At the edge of town, the fires still burn in a building called Truth. You both set it on fire in the initial skirmishes with the casual half-truths that were hurled from each side. You both added gasoline each day; you didn’t control your irregular troops. It is a solid stone building, however, and Truth will usually survive all the heat and smoke that petty politicians can throw at it.

On the other side of town is a building now fully destroyed, a smoldering heap. It was a wood frame building named Integrity. It was always under construction, with a new façade added every four years. It was looted by partisans from both camps, and the shell was finally burned when both of you claimed you had nothing to do with the guerrillas working on your behalf. Nameless Internet scoundrels, leaving tracks to your camps, have pillaged our town. At any moment, you could have stopped them in a heartbeat, but you both chose to take “plausible deniability” to a level that Tricky Dick would be proud of. You both also chose to wear your Medal of Victimhood when you described the horrible things the other side had done to you. The victimhood thing worked, didn’t it?

In the middle of town is a ragged glass house named Fair Hope. It is a hothouse where a fragile organism called community has struggled for over 100 years now. Much of the glass is broken, from rocks thrown by many of us. Our tiny community only works when we can talk in open, face-to-face discourse in an environment of trust, respect and yes, even Love. Is that the Fairhope we wake up to on Oct. 8th?

Between these ruins are our pockmarked stores and our tattered homes with kicked-in doors. This is where you will govern, a Kosovo-like zone that you both helped to create over the last few months.

Unless you both reach out in absolution and reconciliation, we probably won’t have a fair hope of success, but will decay into the parched, nameless town that our actions would say we deserve.

All is not fair in love and war. The ends do not justify the means. Right does not make might. We reap what we sow.

What now, Mr. Mayor?

Mac Walcott is an architect who lives and works in Fairhope.