Well that was fast.

The ballots had hardly been tallied in Pennsylvania’s primary election Tuesday when the mud started to fly. From the campaign of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, to Republican nominee Scott Wagner: “Scott Wagner is the very worst of Harrisburg,” Wolf’s campaign proclaimed in an email.

A day later conservatives were lashing out through the Republican Governor’s Association, which posted a brief digital ad on Twitter calling Wolf a “tax hiker who sat on the sidelines” last year while Pennsylvania struggled through a budgetary crisis that resulted in a credit downgrade and brought the state to its lowest rating in nearly four decades.

These kinds of exchanges are nothing new to Pennsylvania politics — or American politics for that matter. Mudslinging is a time-honored tradition here and across the country.

That doesn’t make it any more productive, or any less distasteful or worthy of rebuke. Which is just what we intend to do here.

Mr. Wolf and Mr. Wagner — who spent the primary campaign engaged in a nasty race with fellow gubernatorial hopeful Paul Mango — should know better. They should be better than this.

If neither candidate can muster the character to prioritize what they stand for and want to accomplish over dragging each other through the proverbial muck, voters have serious cause to consider whether either is fit to hold the state’s highest office.

It would be repugnant to watch these men — both millionaires from York County — savage each other in digital, print and video ads for the next five months, while Pennsylvanians wait for answers to the pressing financial, social and governmental problems plaguing the commonwealth.

Dear Mr. Wolf and Mr. Wagner: Do better.