On Election Night in every city, town, village, and county in America there are winners and losers.

Ideally there should be gracious winners and gracious losers.

Here’s how this works on the night of an election, an accepted practice by candidates at every government level.

As the voting numbers are tabulated and come in to the point that an election is called or is over, the losing candidate picks up the phone and calls the winning candidate to concede and congratulate. Again, this is an age-old, well-known, accepted unwritten rule. It’s the way it’s done, proper procedure that’s been used countless times because it’s simply the right professional and courteous way to operate.

This didn’t happen Tuesday night in Franklin when the mayoral race was being decided between Mayor Steve Olson and challenger John Nelson.

At some point after 9:00 when the votes were still being counted they showed Nelson in the lead but 4600 absentee ballots were still unaccounted for. Thus, the election had not been finalized.

That didn’t matter to Nelson and his brain trust, County Supervisor Steve Taylor, and ROC Ventures Owner and Chief Executive Officer Mike Zimmerman. They just couldn’t display any sense of professionalism and patience. So they texted a rude, pompous, arrogant rub your face in it picture to Olson, long before the official final vote tally came in.

Taylor and Nelson should have known better, having been involved in previous elections. Zimmermann to a lesser degree also should have known better and could have interceded with a cautionary note to hold off on the insulting picture. But he didn’t, having backed all the juvenile tactics of the Nelson campaign from Day One.

No class. None. But they were quick to rip others in a campaign strategy they indeed thoroughly beat Olson at: nastiness.

I think this is just the beginning of the type of administration Nelson will run and the type of advice he’ll be receiving and naively accepting.