Until now, there’s been far more sizzle than steak where the two Democratic candidates for mayor of Columbus are concerned.

Both Lowndes County Supervisor Leroy Brooks and Ward 5 Columbus City Councilman Stephen Jones have portrayed each other as the establishment or old guard, rarely missing an opportunity to take jabs at each other. It’s not unlike two kids in the back of the car, hollering “stop touching me!” then arguing about  “who started it.”

The structure of Tuesday’s candidates forum, staged by the Lowndes County Federation of Democratic Women, seemed designed to prevent that sort of back-and-forth as could be expected. The barbs came, but not to the point where it became a shouting match.

With 20 days left before the April 1 primary that will send one of the candidates on to the general election to face a pair of longshot independents, the dislike between the two Democrats is palpable. That isn’t likely to change. The only question is whether it will be the only thing voters will take away from the campaigns as they head to the polls.

To date, there has been very little daylight between the candidates on issues. When issues are raised, things like crime or economic development the answers from both have been vague and uninspiring.

But there is one issue that has separated the two Democrats: What to do about the unfinished Sen. Terry Brown Amphitheater.

Jones went on record earlier this week saying if he were elected, he would finish the amphitheater in six months. That’s an ambitious schedule but not really the salient point. The point is that Jones wants to complete the amphitheater sooner rather than later, using money from the city’s capital improvement fund to cover the cost or, possibly, using a portion of that money and borrowing the rest.

Now, you don’t have to be a political campaign savant to recognize that the amphitheater was going to be red meat for Brooks. It’s been almost six years since there has been any work at all and the amphitheater has become sort of a running joke, one that reflects poorly on elected officials both current and past.

Guilt by association is a convenient weapon for Brooks to yield.

Last week, Brooks posted a video on his Facebook page where he called the story of the amphitheater a failure of leadership and criticized the proposal for the city to use up to $3 million of the city’s $5 million capital improvement fund to complete the amphitheater.

For some, that appears to be a perfectly acceptable use of that money. It is, after all, a capital improvement and just the sort of thing the city had in mind when it set aside those funds.

“If you’ve got $5 million in surplus funds, maybe you need to hire some policemen or fix some potholes,” Brooks said.

Based on that, finishing the work on the amphitheater does not appear to be a priority for Brooks. That, more than any other issue, is where the two candidates hold distinctly different views.

It is also consistent with Brooks tenure as a Lowndes County supervisor.

The idea of using one-time money for recurring expenses, as Brooks appears to be suggesting, is nothing new.

At the end of 2012, Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders proposed asking the state legislature to allow the county to invest up to half of the county’s $30 million in stocks and bonds. At the time, state law allowed the county to invest in only certificates of deposits or state bonds.

The return of the investment exploded from thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Those sort of dividends presented an obvious question: What to do with all of the money pouring into the county’s coffers? Brooks argued forcefully for spending some of those funds for employee pay raises and other needs. Sanders was adamant that those profits be designated exclusively for capital improvements and convinced the board to agree. It turned out to be a wise decision. In the years that have followed, there are brick-and-mortar testaments to that choice in county facilities and community centers all over the county.

Brooks could have simply put the blame for the unfinished amphitheater at the feet of the mayor and city council and called it a day. Instead, his suggestion of using capital funds for something other than their designated use, suggests he didn’t learn the lesson from 13 years ago.

Instead of exploiting a weakness in his opponent, Brooks may have exposed a flaw of his own.

How much this will affect the outcome of this campaign may depend on how big of an issue the amphitheater is in the minds of voters.

At least on this issue, they have a clear choice.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].