EDITORIAL:

Seems like it’s always silly season with the perpetual elections.

Bad enough we have to listen to the presidential candidates bicker like children and parse each other’s words like lawyers arguing over, well, what the definition of “is” is. But now this sort of semantic silliness has infected Huntington Beach politics.

We are, of course, speaking of Mayor-gate.

There. We said it. We added “gate” to the scandal.

The inane battle over whether Debbie Cook can use her honorific on the ballot for the congressional race this year is about the least-deserving controversy for the “gate” suffix that we can think of, so you can see we’re being sarcastic.

We’re getting flashbacks to that goofy “Surf City” lawsuit.

For those of you who have lives and don’t sit in your pajamas all day in Mom’s basement blogging happily away about Cook’s campaign to unseat Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, here’s a quick recap:

Attorney Michael Schroeder is suing Cook and the Orange County of Registrar of Voters because he doesn’t think Cook should be able to use her title on the ballot.

Now the legal skirmish has turned to Schroeder’s attempt to depose Cook, whose lawyers call harassment of the Democrat.

We’re not going to get into the merits of the lawsuit. Schroeder argues she can’t use the title because she’s not an elected mayor, and he cites the election code as back-up. She was elected to the City Council, but the council members in Huntington Beach annually take turns serving as mayor.

From a legal sense, maybe he has a point.

From a common sense standpoint, this is trivial and a distraction from the candidates talking about the issues.

We have a hard time believing Schroeder’s motivation is anything other than political.

It was revealing that when confronted with the fact that there are some Republican candidates running for office this year using the title of “mayor” in much the same way, Schroeder said he was unaware of that.

We’re pretty sure he won’t sue them.

The main reason this exercise is so silly is that it is ridiculous to suggest Cook’s title will somehow sway the election. Any congressional challenger — even one as well-known and as popular in past elections as Cook — always faces a tough battle to upend an incumbent. Especially one serving his ninth term in office. Especially a congressman as charismatic and well-known as Rohrabacher.

“I don’t know what else they are going to bring: This is a pretty frivolous waste of taxpayer money,” Cook spokesman Joe Shaw said. “We should be talking about the issues. This is what people are sick of — partisan politics.”

We couldn’t agree more.