It’s customary to talk about who won a political debate, but in this case the answer — and it is a cheesy answer — is: the audience.

As far as the candidates themselves go, neither man dominated the evening. In terms of presentation neither Baker nor Mihos were in tip-top form; Baker was under the weather and low on energy, and Mihos’s considerable energy occasionally took over and derailed his focus (to unintentionally comical effect; he referred to US Senator Scott Brown once as “Charlie Brown”). The sparks were few, far-between, and largely mild and ineffective; Mihos took a few light jabs at Baker, trying to play Baker’s former gig at Harvard-Pilgrim as complicity in rising insurance costs, but they fell flat. Baker did not respond in kind.

As for the issues, there were few significant differences between the candidates. Both extolled clamping down on state spending, cutting taxes, increasing transparency and accountability in state government, increasing the GOP’s presence in the Democrat-heavy Legislature, rectifying the many problems with health care in Massachusetts — nothing new here, honestly.

The differences were mostly in the details. Baker endorsed a “five-and-five” model for state sales and income taxes for the sake of maintaining local aid, while Mihos supported Question One on the November ballot to reduce the state sales tax to three percent. Baker would support a single casino in Massachusetts — licensed via an open bidding process and sited in a community that wanted it — in the name of capturing revenue currently jumping the border to Connecticut. Mihos vehemently opposed casinos and suggested instead legalizing sports gambling through the Massachusetts State Lottery.

I say the audience won because they got to witness a solid discussion of the issues that was not couched in sound bites and did not degenerate into negativity. A thrilling night? No, but an informative one.

The one topic into which moderator Rob Sennott never delved — for good or ill — were the candidates’ respective campaigns. Baker has been chided as a big-money candidate who collects special interest donations like baseball cards (his donor list as per the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance reads like a who’s who of the health care, banking, and insurance industries), and I think asking him about his true allegiances would have been completely valid — particularly since candidates beholden to the industries that led to the state and country’s many current challenges are coming under heavy voter scrutiny in this election cycle (and rightly so).

Then there’s Mihos, who has been bleeding out money and campaign staff since late last year, fueling speculation that he won’t even make it to September (or will formally hook up with the Tea Party movement, which he referred to several times during the debate). His campaign coffers are drained ($4,000 or so left as of February) and he’s lost several key staffers, many of whom have taken him to court to recover unpaid wages. It would have been fair to ask the man how he expects to run a state efficiently and economically when he seems to be incapable of running his campaign the same way.

But these are perhaps questions for a future debate…

Since neither of us felt it wise to give up jobs in which we were secure and provided us with suitable income, we chose Middleboro as a nice middle-ground. She could take the train to the city — the Lakeville commuter rail station was a two-minute drive from our apartment — and I had a pretty straight shot down 495 to the Cape. Convenience all around.

As it turned out, Middleboro was a great community. It was quiet, mellow, not very developed — very much like the Falmouth of my childhood. Our apartment was around the corner from a great ice cream shop, and we later discovered an excellent walking route that carried us past a small restaurant and a used book store (both places we still go on occasion), onto Main Street, and past several lovely historic homes.

We were very happy there. When we started the homebuying process, we started looking in Middleboro.

Then the casino came to town.

More specifically, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe pitched a casino for Middleboro, and town leaders pounced on the idea. I remain convinced the board of selectmen saw the potnetial for insane amounts of cash flowing into the cash-strapped town (more than a few residents believe the town would have been less cash-strapped had the selectmen been more fiscally responsible in the first place) and used that prospect to bully the project through. The infamous mass town meeting held mere weeks after the first pitch was a questionable affair, but it cleared the path for the casino to come to town.

That was in 2007. My wife and I decided we didn’t want to live in the same town as a casino. Benefits real or imagined be damned, I’d lived in a community that depended on tourism most of my life, and I was sick of it. I liked the feeling that I wasn’t an unwelcome guest in my own home because all of the oh-so-important tourists were mobbing the place and supporting the local economy, and I didn’t want to go back to that.

So we wound up leaving Middleboro and moving to a nearby community. I still miss Middleboro, and as the casino project has continued to deteriorate, I’ve been feeling a renewed sense of resentment over being driven from a place I thought of as my home.

(I suspect that this will be where some wag chimes in about the same thing happening to the Native Americans, but you know what? I played no part in that, so don’t try and hang institutional guilt on me. I don’t play that game.)

I got a fresh whiff of ire this week when I found out that the town of Halifax, one of the communities that could experience collateral damage (or benefits) from the casino funded a survey that indicates the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe doesn’t have any historical ties to the land they purchased in Middleboro — one of the crucial factors in getting the land placed into trust for use as a casino.

Why am I not surprised that the proposal’s main salesman, Glenn Marshall — the guy who was convicted on scamming Social Security, tax fraud, embezzlement, and making illegal campaign contributions — apparently lied about the tribe’s ties to the town?

It’s looking less and less likely that the casino will happen, and it the project does indeed collapse, I’ll be happy for my former neighbors, who will be able to breathe a profound sigh of relief. I just wish I could join them.