In Fort Worth, Ms. Price’s fiscal conservatism is being contrasted with Mr. Lane’s experience on the council and in his current position on the board of the Tarrant Regional Water District.  There are twists to each race. Mr. Rawlings, who has served as Dallas’s homeless czar and as the director of the Dallas Parks Board, has spent more than $2 million on his campaign so far — at least 10 times as much as Mr. Kunkle spent in the general election. Mr. Rawlings, despite being tagged as the candidate of North Dallas, has logged considerable time campaigning in underserved South Dallas, calling it the city’s “greatest untapped resource.”  Historically, Mr. Kunkle has stronger ties to South Dallas, where he patrolled as a Dallas beat officer 40 years ago and worked his way up to the chief’s office. On his watch, Dallas’s crime rate dropped 36 percent to its lowest rate since 1970. His campaign manager is former State Representative Steve Wolens, the husband of former Mayor Laura Miller, who appointed Mr. Rawlings as homeless czar.  In Fort Worth, the Seventh Street Gang, a group of business leaders, hand-picked Ms. Price, a long-distance cyclist and avid hunter, to run. Mr. Lane, who was endorsed by police and firefighter associations, is a good old boy who favors western hats and is responsible for creating the Herd, the longhorns that parade on red-brick Exchange Avenue in the Stockyards daily for the benefit of tourists. Both candidates attended Arlington Heights High School on the city’s west side.  “From my perspective, the interest in the two elections is about the same — which is not very much,” said Tammye Nash, a senior editor at Dallas Voice. But Ms. Nash acknowledged that the comity between candidates in both races had been refreshing. “It seems they’re all moderates, and they’re moving towards the middle,” she said.  Indeed, if state politics have taken a hard-right turn, city politics are a different animal, as both runoffs demonstrate. Annise Parker of Houston is the first openly gay mayor of a major American city. Austin is, as ever, proudly liberal. Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio is being touted as the great brown hope of the state’s Democratic Party. Dallas, Harris and Travis counties all voted for President Obama in 2008, the first such hat trick in a presidential election since Lyndon B. Johnson ran in 1964.  While Dallas turned blue a few years back, Fort Worth remains staunchly Republican. But both cities maintain tolerant, welcoming and inclusive visions. If this keeps up, by next election, they’ll be singing “Kumbaya” and joining hands across Interstate 30.  Joe Nick Patoski is a frequent contributor to these pages.  A version of this article appears in print on June 12, 2011, on Page A35A of the National edition with the headline: These Big-City Mayoral Runoffs Are Civil, Too Civil. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Both Dallas and Forth Worth have big mayoral runoff elections coming up, but no one seems all that fired up about them, including the remarkably civilized candidates themselves.