Electionville

Nov. 4 can’t arrive soon enough. The bombardment of TV and digital ads in the Tom Cotton-Mark Pryor race, not to mention the rest, are beyond the point of tiresome.

The Cotton and Pryor campaigns and their allied PACs have raised a collective $44.2 million, and much of it has been spent on silly attack ads that go mostly ignored.

Whether your candidate wins is another matter, but we’re sure all of us will breathe a sigh of relief when the commercials and the Internet pop-ups finally come to an end. But in Fayetteville, the election season won’t be over.

In the Washington County seat, voters will have to head to the polls one more time, likely on Dec. 9, to decide the fate of Chapter 119 of the City Code, otherwise known as the civil rights ordinance. Among other things, the ordinance protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender in employment, housing and public accommodations. The ordinance’s arrival at the steps of City Hall has to-date triggered a council vote, a petition drive, a lawsuit and an election.

According to finance reports submitted to the Arkansas Ethics Commission, the pro-ordinance Keep Fayetteville Fair is being powered by a pro-bono task force of staffers from the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group out of Washington, D.C. Anti-ordinance Repeal 119, on the other hand, is being funded by local cash.

It looks like Keep Fayetteville Fair is operating a command center out of an office on the Fayetteville Square, while Repeal 119 is aggressively raising funds for its campaign.

Think about it — an election on Dec. 9, smack between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and right on the heels of the ugly, exhausting Cotton-Pryor race. Let’s just hope we don’t have another Houston, Texas, situation, where city officials subpoenaed the sermons of the pastors trying to repeal the civil rights ordinance passed there in May.

Happy holidays, Fayetteville.