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All right, everyone. It's over. Can we all just settle down now?

I swear there's nothing more ridiculous than an off-cycle City Council election.

Toss in the equally ridiculous (and failed) effort to recall Councilor Don Harris, a "candidate" like Paulette de'Pascal — who apparently was hearing voices telling her the council was the route to Mount Rushmore — and add a touch of push polling and whatnot . . ..

Please.

The entirety of it was a major turnoff — to the tune of about 90 percent of us who were eligible to vote staying at home, at work, under the covers, hiding in the closet or going anywhere but a voting booth.

I'm not too terribly bothered by it. I'd bet money the ballot percentage splits would have been similar at our traditional 20 to 25 percent turnout. So let's consider this election a really loud and expensive poll.

Now the recap has begun, and it's fairly well agreed, from this paper to blogs to any given street corner, that the results were a referendum on Mayor Martin Chavez.

I don't necessarily agree with that. At least not for the reasons I've been reading.

From what I can glean, I don't buy that a majority of that 10 percent who voted collectively said "play nice" to the mayor. The message the last two weeks, in my ears, at least, was "stop playing games."

As pointed out in The Tribune on Monday, the whole thing boiled down to a bad soap opera.

It's incredulous, for example, that mayoral staffers were involved in some of the council races. I realize there's a right to do it on your free time, but I can't find a soul who believes any of it is aboveboard.

And it was most interesting to hear the similarity, in wording and in tone, of ideas from some voters that if the mayor was supporting a candidate, then that candidate was an automatic no vote for them. And with some gusto behind it.

The mayor officially was supporting only Katherine Martinez to unseat Debbie O'Malley, but I didn't meet many who believed the official line.

The leading name by far to take the stick was Joan Griffin. When you asked potential voters why, there never was anything specific behind it, until those push-poll calls in her district started.

Griffin is a decent woman, but for whatever reason she seems to have stooped to unnecessary indecency. Did the tacticians on the 11th floor talk her into it? I hope so, for her sake. Coming in third with about 800 votes was damning. She's going to have to live with that one.

On the other side, it's equally interesting to hear from the mayor's supporters that they just do not fathom the angst over him. I spoke with a Griffin supporter who has had some dealings with the mayor, both officially and not, and she just could not understand what's behind all this ire. This is a fairly seasoned person who has been around the block, mind you. That's how it is regarding the mayor.

Beyond the candidates themselves, what are we to make of this idea of publicly financed efforts? Did you get your money's worth? The funniest bit is how few people found the voting booth to cash in on their investment.

And why do we have such a problem paying these city councilors? The proposed raise from $9,000-something a year to almost $30,000 a year might have been too big a bite at the apple.

Feel free to consider the raise trouncing as a message: All fights have two sides. and you're not completely innocent here.

So does the mayor have to play nice? Certainly not.

This idea that the mayor has to carry himself in some different manner is not reality. What have you seen in the past two years to suggest he has lost even a minute of sleep over any allegation or accusation, real or imagined?

Finally, my interest in the election cycle is determining the answer to this question: Which councilor has set himself or herself up best to be the next mayor?

I'm not sure, frankly, but for anyone looking down the road, the next question is: Who exactly has to play nice with whom from this point to get there?