Some 45,000 people call Coeur d'Alene home. Within the city's borders, 21,433 were registered to vote in this week's municipal elections. And of those, 6,299 actually did.

That's 29.4 percent - a demoralizingly low figure with so many important matters at hand, but a figure that should be heeded like a powerful trumpeter atop Tubbs Hill. Go ahead and point out that more than seven of 10 qualified voters didn't even bother to show up. But ignore those 6,299 voices at your peril.

In all walks of life, a few people do most of the heavy lifting. Inventors and entrepreneurs are small in number but gigantic in impact. It is said that 20 percent of sales people make 80 percent of the sales, and the same ratio fits numerous other ventures.

Like the trumpeter on Tubbs, Coeur d'Alene voters unleashed booming sounds with their election choices, and discerning ears now must make out exactly what those sounds mean.

The lone incumbent on the council, the gentleman John Bruning, was trounced by insurance salesman Steve Adams, who made no bones on the campaign trail about his assessment of city government: It's doing everything wrong and nothing right.

Dan Gookin was more diplomatic than that, but the author of instructional books who had lost two previous city council election bids bounced former state Rep. George Sayler like an irrelevant political ball. Like Adams and Bruning, Gookin and Sayler happened to be playing on opposite sides of the McEuen Field fence.

And Ron Edinger, who served on the council for four decades and eagerly became the poster child for keeping McEuen Field just as it is, suffered no anti-incumbency surge. Edinger geezered his young foe right into the ground.

There's a McEuen Mandate in there somewhere.

Consider, too, that the landslide victories for Gookin and Adams are all the more impressive because organized labor opposed them. How many of the city's 350 employees and their extended families, do you suppose, embraced the two challengers who proclaimed those employees are overpaid and overbenefited? Disagreeing on what should become of a park on the lake is one thing, but if you're a city employee, voting for someone who wants to yank the feathers out of your golden goose is quite another.

The election is over. This is no time for further factionalizing. Give the victors time to crow and don't begrudge the losers a bitter tear. Then let's come together as a community and figure out how to make a good town a little better.