Both Chris Hensley and Frank Cownie are energetic. Both have a deep and genuine affection for the Capital City. They promise to give Des Moines voters a vigorous mayoral campaign by focusing most on their individual strengths – and, if the tactics the two practiced in their primary bids are an indication, a civil one.

Don’t look for Cownie to haul out those tired, cliched devil-incarnate images that weren’t funny four years ago, aren’t groan-worthy today and are unlikely to warrant a chuckle in the future. No matter how many times unimaginative political commentator wannabes run the Hensley-devil connection up the flagpole and call it edgy, nobody’s saluting it. Put another way, it’s time to finally bury that stinking, rotting horse.

Neither should anyone expect Hensley to paint her opponent as the guy who wants to sell off city parks. Almost everybody knows Cownie was thinking out loud during some tense budget meetings in which precious few money-saving options remained when he suggested looking at the park inventory. A reporter jumped on the comment, made it a headline and before you could say MacRae Park, the wagons were circled, Cownie was squarely in the park-and-rec types’ sights and the real message got lost: that drastic fiscal conditions demand zero-based budgeting approaches that leave nothing off the table. Let’s shovel dirt in the face of that one, too.

The advantage in having a race between two candidates whose intentions have been maligned is that it improves the odds that they’ll remain civil and focused on issues. Both Cownie and Hensley have the political will to lead Des Moines through the choppy waters of its future, though they may want to steer the vessel in different directions. The only question in voters’ minds should be which candidate is in the best position to right the ship.

That puts much of the onus for an issue-oriented campaign that focuses on problems, strategies and solutions squarely on the shoulders of the media. It tests our fiber. Superfluous attention on smear jobs and dirty campaign tricks may sell more newspapers or increase pick-up rates and ratings, but if that’s the how the press sees its role in a free, open and democratic society, the press has lost its way. Citizens deserve more and they should demand more. The problem is, if they get only banal, dim-witted character assasinations under the guise of political coverage, they’ll think that’s what they want and need.

The race is far more complex than a simple analysis of the primary election results indicates. Hensley received almost 7,300 votes, about 3,000 more than Cownie. Together, though, Cownie, Mark McCormick and Gayle Collins received more than 12,000 votes. Collins was strong among labor, police and fire interests; McCormick among South Side and East Side Democrats; and Cownie among Democrats in general.

That’s a huge deficit for Hensley to overcome. She’ll have to convince voters that party affiliation isn’t a factor in a non-partisan municipal election – not an easy feat given the propensity of some of the media to attach “Republican” after her name and “Democrat” after Cownie’s. When the media turn a non-partisan race into a partisan one by providing information that’s not germane to the election, it’s a huge disservice to voters and to the process.

Cownie and Hensley should give us a lively, aboveboard election. And journalists, if they’re truly serving their missions, should give voters something of substance to chew on.