I have attended many political debates over the years but I have never, ever heard of a candidate wrap up the night by saying: “What Bonner County needs is an enema!”

Well, now I have.

That quote is attributed to Patty Douglas Palmer, who is apparently running for the seat of county enema in the May primary election.

Patty Douglas Palmer is running for county commissioner against Joe Young and Mike Nielsen.

She was one of 13 candidates on the stage at Sandpoint High School last Thursday at a political forum sponsored by the Bee, the Sandpoint Chamber and PCDC and emceed by yours truly.

So, how do you top her performance?

While Palmer’s comment could be chalked up to “consider the source,” Steve Tanner’s answers to seemingly simple questions were disturbing, frightening and intolerant.

As one person wrote: “The views expressed by Mr. Tanner would establish a dictatorial theocracy which is totally antiethical to any healthy democracy.”

Tanner is running against Sen. Shawn Keough, who in my opinion, has done an outstanding job as our senator from District 1. There is no comparison here.

Tanner would cut state funding by 80 percent and at the same time mandate textbooks that honor God, “that further teach all subjects as they were taught at the founding of our nation, and ask God for forgiveness (for public educators and the public education system as a whole) for their past and present failure.”

He was actually booed after this comment and his plans to close prisons by substantially increasing the number of executions in Idaho didn’t go over so well, either.

Tanner is pretty well known in these parts as an extremest and the fact that someone — anyone — would accidentally cast a ballot for this man alarms  me. The fact that someone would vote for him because of these “my way is the only way” beliefs and his interpretation of the Bible as well as his screwy misrepresentation about what our Founding Fathers really meant, should give everyone pause.

This is an important election.

The two candidates mentioned here have a decent shot at attracting votes. They won’t win and probably won’t even come close.

There won’t be a lot of votes cast in this election. As of last week, the number of absentee ballots requested were alarmingly low. The number of absentee ballots in most Bonner County elections is a pretty good sign of the overall interest in an election year.

This is also a great year to be a Republican … or at least to pickup a Republican ballot. There isn’t one contested, regional contest on the Democratic ballot. In Idaho, while you don’t have to register a party preference, voters do have to request a partisan ballot.

Saturday’s Bee had interviews with most of the candidates and we have also run a sample ballot. Both of these items can be found online at bonnercountydailybee.com. You can also just stop by the Bee for a copy of the questionnaire.

Bee endorsements will be included in the Sunday paper. You can probably guess two candidates who won’t be endorsed by reading the above comments.

Please drop me a line online at dkeyes@bonnercountydailybee.com or on Facebook or attach a comment on the bottom of this column on bonnercountydailybee.com to let me know if we should endorse candidates and if so, whom should we endorse.

Please let me know why we should endorse your candidate without personally attacking his or her opponent.

David Keyes is publisher of the Daily Bee. His column runs weekly.