Time to reset tone

In the state of nature, Thomas Hobbes wrote nearly 370 years ago, life is nasty, brutish and short. When it comes to the 2019 mayoral election in Houston, it appears that he got only two of three right. As of late Tuesday night, with votes still being counted, this highly contentious election looked as if it was headed for extra innings.

Mayor Sylvester Turner appeared to be short of the just over 50 percent he needed to avoid a Dec. 14 runoff with apparent second-place finisher Tony Buzbee. Then again, as of press time Tuesday night, Harris County vote-counters were predicting it’d be hours before final results were known. Still, given how ugly the two candidates’ campaigns turned in the final weeks before Election Day, the likely prospect of another month of electioneering is about as welcome as holiday traffic at the Galleria.

As Election Day neared, Turner and Buzbee trained their fire on each other, mostly ignoring the other top contenders, including businessman Bill King, Councilman Dwight Boykins and former Councilwoman Sue Lovell, who failed to get much attention from the electorate. This was particularly stinging for King, who was narrowly defeated four years ago by Turner and this time around saw his support among conservative voters — along with some of his policy proposals — cannibalized by Buzbee.

The negative ads made for tough television viewing for the public. But perhaps now that voters have dispensed with 10 candidates and appeared to have left just Turner and Buzbee to square off against each other, the candidates will stop their mud-wrestling and focus on how each will address the issues voters have said again and again they want fixed.

The editorial board met with dozens of candidates for City Council and mayor during the campaign, and nearly all pointed to the same struggles facing Houston: flood mitigation, drainage, solid waste and recycling, roads and the disbursement of Hurricane Harvey recovery funds.

Families hit hard by Harvey who are still waiting, two years on, for checks to repair their homes are tired of excuses from the city, even if the mayor makes a reasonable case that the state is responsible for much of the delay. Truth is, when you’re waiting for badly needed help, you want results, not explanations. And while we haven’t lost our conviction that Turner is the best candidate for the job, Tuesday’s results show that many Houstonians are not yet convinced.

Houston’s strong-mayor system means that tackling these problems requires leadership from the chief executive, who sets the agenda. If a runoff is declared, Turner should spend these next weeks speaking directly to voters who are dissatisfied and show how he can make the relief money flow faster in a second term.

He should leave the mudslinging behind and remind voters of his accomplishments — selling a multi-billion-dollar pension reform plan in Austin chief among them — even as he looks forward to addressing the concerns that appear to have kept him from an outright victory Tuesday night.

Buzbee needs to tone down the headline-grabbing and show that he can offer voters real solutions to the challenges Houston faces and that he didn’t spend $10 million of his own money to be a spoiler.

What voters want to see is proof that their candidate is a leader worthy of this city.