Mr. Jenkins says that the West Selma precinct polling place was simply too far removed from his core constituency - poor voters with no means of transportation. So how, then, would Mr. Jenkins explain the electoral success of Selma Councilwoman Jackie Lacy?

Like Mr. Jenkins, Mrs. Lacy is black, so it's logical to assume they shared the same voter base. If that base is truly poor people with no means to get to the polls, then Mrs. Lacy should have shared Mr. Jenkins' disappointment at the polls. Instead, she led the balloting for two seats on the Town Council.

No, something else was in play in Mr. Jenkins' loss. Our guess would be that most voters simply liked the job that incumbent mayor Charles Hester is doing. Mr. Hester can be gruff and didactic, but no one questions his resolve to restore Selma to financial health.

But for the sake of argument, assume that Mr. Jenkins was playing an away game on Mr. Hester's home turf. It was still his job to devise a winning game plan. Mr. Jenkins knew long before the election that the West Selma polling place was not in the best spot for his voters. He had plenty of time, then, to rent a van, charter a bus, take any step necessary, to get his voters to the polls on election day.

A lot of visiting teams lose road games. The good ones don't blame the referees, especially when the evidence points to a fairly called game. No, the good ones look at the game tape to see where they went wrong and then try to fix the problems before they play again. Mr. Jenkins should be putting his energy there, not on a polling place that was obviously not a handicap.

Candidates for office can be resilient creatures. Witness Art Holder, whose political fate two years ago rested, literally, on the luck of the draw. Mr. Holder proved unlucky then, but two years later, he rebounded to easily win a seat on the Clayton Town Council.

It is possible, however, for first-time candidates to do themselves so much harm that they forever handicap their chances of winning an election. We're afraid Cathy Truitt, the former Four Oaks School principal, might have done that in her bid for a seat on the Wake County Board of Education.

Had Dr. Truitt asked for our advice, we would have told her to throw in the towel after she came up well short in the first round of voting in October. Simply put, John Tedesco was too far ahead to catch in the four weeks between elections. Politically, we don't think Dr. Truitt would have suffered any lasting harm had she congratulated the winner and promised to keep fighting the good fight on behalf of Wake County schoolchildren.

But Dr. Truitt called for a runoff race that she could not win. That was her first mistake. Her second was saying, just days later, that she was quitting the runoff. Perhaps she suddenly realized that she could not catch Mr. Tedesco, but voters don't like to see their candidates waffle, and they certainly don't like to see them waffle at the expense of taxpayers. Through Dr. Truitt bowed out, the Wake Board of Elections said the runoff would go on, with taxpayers footing the bill, of course.

After the elections board made its ruling, Dr. Truitt said it was OK if voters cast ballots for her and that she would accept the seat if elected. In other words, she was back in a race she had just quit. Of all her stumbles in the race, that one likely upset voters most, and Mr. Tedesco went on to a landslide win in November.

It's been our experience that voters don't hold one loss against a candidate. But in a matter of weeks, Dr. Truitt went from loser to quitter to opportunist. We doubt voters can forgive that, and that's unfortunate, because Dr. Truitt is a fine educator who would have made an equally fine school board member.

One last word on the 2009 elections: We don't know why Clifton Cooley failed to win a seat on the Wilson's Mills Town Council, but we're pretty sure it wasn't the fault of the Johnston County Board of Elections.

Mr. Cooley says otherwise, noting that the Board of Elections' Web site, in one place, had the wrong polling place for Wilson's Mills. But that mistake was there for everyone to see, including supporters of Mr. Cooley's opponents on the Nov. 3 race. Put another way, if Mr. Cooley can find voters who say they went to the wrong polling place, then the winners can too. It was an equal-opportunity mistake.

Besides, the Board of Elections mailed voters notice of the change in polling place.

As excuses go, Mr. Cooley's is a nonstarter. It's time to move on.