Kudos to Ralph Tucker and Jackie Sartoris for demonstrating how Maine politics should be. The two Democrats, who competed for the seat being vacated by Charlie Priest, didn’t disagree on much in terms of the issues, but they did have some very different ideas about campaign funding.

Sartoris ran as a Maine Clean Elections Act candidate; Tucker decided early on, in light of court rulings that took the heart out of Maine’s law, to run as a traditional candidate.

They were 10 votes apart at the end of last Tuesday’s primary. After considering it for a day, Sartoris requested a recount, which was duly completed yesterday at the Secretary of State’s office. After the recount, there was no change in the result, and Sartoris gracefully conceded.

Tucker will go on and challenge Republican Mark Holbrook for the House District 50 seat in November.

In spite of the current partisan sniping in the Legislature and in the Governor’s Office, this sort of politics was traditionally the norm in Maine. Maine is beautiful, but it’s a difficult land from which to wring a living. It seemed that most politicians took that into consideration while formulating public policy, at least until 2011.

It was Scottish author and theologian Ian Maclaren (although most people attribute it to Plato) who first said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” And for many years, our local legislators and governors took that advice to heart. That created a level of civility in politics that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country.

Even with the worst of the partisan sniping over the last four years, our Legislature does a far better job than almost all other states of solving problems together. It’s one of the many things that makes Maine the way life should be.

We hope the Tucker- Holbrook campaign — and every other campaign in our state — will live up to the high bar Tucker and Sartoris have set. It’s essential for good governance that candidates in an election do not see their opponents or their opponents’ parties as mortal enemies. When they get to Augusta, they’ll have to learn to work together, and there is very little time to waste.

Our congratulations to Ralph Tucker, as well as Kim Talbot and Brian Hobart, the other two primary winners in our region. We look forward to thoughtful campaigns this fall that will give the voters a sense of where the candidates stand on the issues that matter to us, not a sense of what they think about their worthy opponents.