State Rep. Keith Fitzgerald and Tax Collector Barbara Ford-Coats, both incumbent Democrats, won their races. Registered nurse Teresa Carafelli, a Democratic challenger, joined the Public Hospital Board. For the Democrats, that was it.

The party fielded 18 candidates this year – the highest in decades, by far – and most of them were well-qualified for the posts they sought. But victories were elusive.

The difference, it seems, once again, was money -- especially the party money, PAC money and independent electioneering groups’ money flooding to Republican candidates near the end. Most of those dollars bought attack television commercials, which turned what looked to be a good Democratic year locally into ballot business as usual.

New College Environmental Studies Program founder Jono Miller, a man with an impressive resumé of advanced education and 25 years’ unrivaled community service, had raised three times as much money as his opponent, much of it from Republican business people he said were impressed with his plan to boost the local economy.

And he’d led in some polls going into the last days of his county commission race.

Then came the deluge: The Sarasota County Republican Party’s commercials, approved by Mason – a one-term Democratic city commissioner with scant credentials who switched parties and lost her seat to Fredd Atkins – suddenly had buckets of money. With it, her handlers ran a blizzard of TV commercials featuring a ridiculously stumbling, bearded man wearing a pink tutu, with the label "Jono Miller" on a black bar above the image. It was a vision of ineptitude and tacky gender-identity suggestions worthy of the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

Political commercials used to feature unattractive photographs of opponents. Now slash-and-burn consultants hire actors or use photo-manipulation software to create visual lies to enhance the dire records of service they make up and citations of vile votes never cast.

"Low-information voters" must have believed the "dancer" was Miller – "Who wants a state representative like that?"–and voted heavily for Mason. Miller lost by 8 percentage points.

Mason did not return telephone messages seeking comment.

County Republican Chairman Eric Robinson said no sexual-identity innuendo was intended; the commercials he produced were just meant to be "light-hearted and funny," he said.

For incumbent state Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, Republican groups hired a fat actor to stuff his face with ice cream, "double-dipping," while a voice-over made one false accusation after another on behalf of real estate saleswoman Laura Benson, whom Fitzgerald nonetheless defeated for the second time despite her $100,000 state party- and Realtor PAC-financed final days flamethrower. But as an incumbent, Fitzgerald could afford to respond with his own commercials, and he did.

Fitzgerald also survived the loss of a potentially critical 2 percent of the vote that went to a bogus "Green Party" candidate recruited by former Republican Party Chairman Robert Waechter, who routinely employs legal dirty tricks such as putting up fake candidates to close primaries to Independents and Democrats, or siphon off votes from Democratic opponents.

Republican Executive Committee members do little to challenge their party’s win-at-any-cost tactics that mock ethics rules and perennial calls for electoral civility. Heck, the tactics usually work.

The ultimate sources and amounts of the last-minute tsunami of GOP money won’t be known for weeks, if at all, since only direct contributions to candidates must be filed publicly before the election. Nonetheless, estimates range up to $100,000 for each candidate in those final days.

"Oh, they’ll say the tutu ad was just a joke," Miller said. "... But, obviously, I was offended. I get it that she won. I accept that. It’s neat we’ll have an African-American on the commission. I wish her well …

"What I’m angry about is the techniques used ... all the lying about what I was trying to accomplish."

Miller recalls Sarasota County Republican Party Chairman Eric Robinson sitting in on a symposium he gave for high school students and their parents titled, "Teens Tackle Politics." Robinson was holding a recording device, Miller said, "trolling for anything he could use against me."

When Miller said that insurance premiums could never cover all the claims if a major hurricane hit a populous area, Robinson had it: "Miller says insurance premiums must be raised."

But that was minor. Most of the time, the campaigns don’t need that much of a factual basis; "they just make stuff up," Fitzgerald said.

"I know this goes on all over the country, but it’s new here at the county commission level," Miller said, "and [Mason] signed the Sarasota County Civic League’s pledge."

In that pledge, candidates agreed not to use ads that were dishonest (containing lies or distortions), irresponsible (degrading public discourse), or disrespectful (that don’t treat the opposing candidate as a worthy citizen). Benson and Mason signed without a second thought.

Civic League President Suzanne Gregory said the league is considering dropping its pledge against negative campaigning altogether, because it is so cynically and flagrantly disregarded by some candidates that it has become meaningless. "And the League has no enforcement mechanism to do anything about it.

"There were definitely times when this year’s campaigns got ugly," Gregory said. "A couple of them sank to a new low. And we’ve struggled with that. So we’re going to have to review the issue," she said. "It’s too bad" their word alone, their signatures didn’t mean anything.

Democratic Party Chairwoman Rita Ferrandino, who’s earned plaudits for her leadership in rebuilding the local party, said she is sticking with the job.What happened this year, she said, "will not happen again."

But she’s not talking about grabbing a wet suit and diving into the slime pit, too. Ferrandino, who works as a private equity investment banker, swears that the Republicans’ last-minute bludgeoning of top Democratic candidates will not happen again; the local party will redouble its fundraising efforts, she added.

"All these third-party players are a serious trend we need to counter. But we have all the pieces and parts in place now; we can compete on the ground, and we now have a significant mind-share. ... I feel every bit a winner."

But those ads and commercials don’t just determine winners and losers.

Fitzgerald said a lot of pressures are placed on legislators in Tallahassee, and if "people know you were willing to run vulgar and dishonest ads, that you’d say or do anything it takes to get up there …," there would be little expectation that a House or Senate member would stand up and do the right thing in a tight spot.