Perhaps never has a citizenry so clearly imposed its will than in last week’s Smithfield Town Council election.

The ouster of two incumbents by a slate of candidates committed to controlling rapid residential growth that threatens much of what people love about Smithfield was a mandate by any definition. More than 500 votes separated Darren Cutler, who got the fewest votes of the four controlled-growth candidates, and incumbent Councilman Jim Collins.

On the heels of a 2022 election that saw a longtime incumbent mayor defeated and a 2023 county election that saw a departing town councilwoman struggle to beat a write-in candidate for a Smithfield-centric seat on the Isle of Wight Board of Supervisors, voters on Nov. 5 emphatically ended the reign of a ruling class that lost sight of the first job of elected leadership: Listen to the citizens you serve.

Surely those voters also put to rest the absurd suggestion by some smart people that opposition to deeply unpopular residential developments like Mallory Pointe and the Grange at 10Main was a loud minority of malcontents, that a “silent majority” was just fine with elected and appointed leadership’s management of growth in northern Isle of Wight. 

Former Town Councilman Milton Cook and others made that claim to give political cover for Steve Bowman, Renee Rountree and Valerie Butler to approve the Grange last year in the face of intense citizen opposition. The silent majority was scared to speak, Cook asserted. When the outcome of an online reader poll on the Grange contradicted the narrative, Cook accused this newspaper’s publisher of manipulating the results. Well, the beauty of the ballot box in this country is that no one’s looking over your shoulder. The “silent majority” could have spoken during last week’s election, but it didn’t because it never existed.

Collins and Raynard Gibbs, good, capable men who served the community honorably during their brief terms on the Town Council, were victims of the establishment’s arrogance, appointed to fill unexpired terms in a sham of a process that was over before it ever started. More than 20 upstanding, highly qualified citizens offered themselves for service, not knowing that the selection of Collins and Gibbs was predetermined by those in power.  

In the end, Collins and Gibbs could not overcome that association, reinforced by public endorsements from Bowman and Rountree. Early in the campaign, Collins dismissed unhappy citizens as “keyboard warriors,” which may have been the beginning of the end of his short council tenure.

The new council can soon get about the important work that should have begun five years ago: protecting Smithfield’s small-town way of life, working with the county and state to build the infrastructure needed for slow, careful growth, and resisting the forces that would make this community just another Hampton Roads suburb with clogged roads and overcrowded schools.    

They do so with the backing of a citizenry that made its intentions abundantly clear on Nov. 5.