Stuart – a small Florida town roughly halfway between Orlando and Miami – is an idyllic place. It was named USA TODAY's "best coastal small town" in 2024, and has finished high in the rankings in other years as well.
Friendliness used to be so entrenched in the town's culture that locals decided years ago to keep a roundabout in place at the baffling intersection of four roads and a set of railroad tracks – aptly named Confusion Corner – in part because they believed motorists were laid back enough to work out their differences without resorting to road rage.
Over the past couple of years, though, Stuart has been a community divided. It's a small-scale version of what's been happening across our entire country, with no resolution in sight.
Yes, the majority rules, but not always benevolently
In Stuart,
what I call "the Rule of 3" began after a city election two years ago. Two new commissioners with no previous political experience unseated incumbents, forming a coalition with another commissioner who had frequently been the lone dissenter on the five-member body.
The election had consequences that were almost immediate. By a 3-2 vote, the commission backed out of a commitment it had previously made to support a station for passenger rail service in the city.
That was only the beginning. The commission, with the same split of votes, imposed a temporary moratorium on all new development, including situations in which landowners had proper zoning to build. The same three-member bloc pursued a plan to require all future development projects in the historically Black East Stuart neighborhood to be submitted for commission approval, even if their zoning was in order.
The warring factions could be characterized as "slow growth" versus "no or extremely limited growth," since outspoken advocates for development are rare in the town of about 20,000. Those might seem like subtle differences to outsiders, but within Stuart, the opposing sides feud at public meetings and online as bitterly as TV's "The Real Housewives."
Eventually, as city government became increasingly chaotic and unstable, the ruling three in Stuart decided to fire longtime City Manager Mike Mortell, replacing him with someone who had no previous experience in city management.
In Stuart, two wrongs didn't make a right
Then the tables turned after the August election. The two incumbents who had been in the minority won their reelection bids, along with a like-minded commissioner who was ousted during the previous election cycle.
At the first meeting after the election, with no advance notice, the new Rule of 3 fired the new manager and replaced Sean Reed, the commissioner who had been serving as mayor – largely a ceremonial role in Florida's commission-manager form of government – with one of its own. Then the ruling majority voted to rehire Mortell.
I can imagine how anyone looking to make a long-term business or personal investment in Stuart might react to what's been happening there.
To some residents who felt like they were on the outside looking in the past two years, the changes must feel like poetic justice. But this situation is unlikely to have a "happily ever after" ending.
One of the reelected commissioners won by fewer than 20 votes, a clear illustration of just how evenly divided the community is.
In future elections, either side seems capable of wrestling the advantage from the other, potentially setting up endless two-year cycles of "winner-take-all" governing.
Rather than trying to seek common ground, each side seems intent on dominating the other, reducing a place where it's not uncommon to bump into neighbors at community gatherings into a perpetual battleground.
Our country needs to rethink political warfare
Does any of this sound familiar?
It feels like our country is divided, with less than one-third self-identifying as Democrats, about the same percentage identifying as Republicans, and the people who are "in the middle" swinging the political pendulum back and forth every two or four years.
That wouldn't matter as much if everyone remembered our democracy features not only majority rule, but also protection for the rights of those who are not in the majority.
In my parents' time, I remember they and their friends would have spirited debates about politics in the run-up to elections. When the elections were over, everyone remained friends. Their conversations turned to other topics, upon which they often agreed. It was nothing personal.
Likewise, it used to be a stock part of winning candidates' acceptance speeches to promise to govern on behalf of all their constituents, not just those who voted for them. Losing candidates often promised to support and even work with those who had defeated them, for the common good of all involved.
Was it empty political rhetoric? Maybe sometimes it was. Maybe sometimes not. At a minimum, it acknowledged that winning and losing graciously in politics was a social virtue. These days, no one thinks twice about politicians trying to seek revenge on their real or perceived enemies once in power.
Is this trend reversible? An email conversation with Reed, the former Stuart mayor who was ousted from the position when the political winds in his town shifted, didn't offer me a lot of hope.
I asked Reed if, knowing what he knows now, he regretted any of those 3-2 votes in which his side prevailed. Were there any situations where, in hindsight, he thought it might have been better to step back from taking more controversial actions for the sake of community unity?
"Yeah, I haven’t felt like that," Reed replied. "I felt like I voted based off of the information I found or that was available."
Even as the proverbial bug rather than the windshield, he was remorseless.
That illustrates a big-picture problem our society has right now. We're going to be stuck in neutral until more people recognize that changing one's viewpoint after learning new information is a sign of intelligence, not weakness.
And, in a country where the majority rules but minority rights are supposed to be respected, the correct political question to ask isn't always whether you can do something, but rather if you should.
Blake Fontenay is USA TODAY's commentary editor.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The tyranny of majority rule has infected small-town politics | Opinion
