Last night I made a post about a politician from a competing party that has decided to seek nomination for her party in another riding. I have followed this person for about five years and had the good fortune to connect and get to know her the tiniest bit during the past couple of years and civic election, and have found she is kind, hard-working, intelligent, and frankly would be a great representative regardless of her political stripe.

So, I shared the post for her announcement event and encouraged people who may be politically aligned with her to show up and see what she’s about.

I was somewhat surprised by the responses, I expected I would actually take quite a bit of flack for “promoting” someone on the other team.

“You’re a class act.”

“We need more of this.”

“Good stuff.”

“Respect, I thank you for that.”

Why is it that this comes as such a surprise to people? Why are we so married to our political identities that we can’t acknowledge someone else as having the skills and abilities to be a good representative, or a good person?

The polarity in our political system is what causes the average voter who is only political during a writ period to tune out. When we spend more time screaming across the aisle than we do engaging in a thoughtful, respectful manner, focused on the humanity we are elected to improve, we lose sight of what’s important in life.

I don’t think this is a radical idea, but perhaps it is. Maybe we would see more engagement and better candidates if we all were to check our mentalities and operate with a bit more sportsmanship and a little less gamesmanship in our political tactics.