Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Some folks decided to bash Jonathan Paton in one of my posts about Steve Leal. Hey, bash his silly, somewhat punitive and nakedly partisan proposal, but, the guy does live in city limits.

Republicans in Tucson have been trying to get rid of partisan elections for city council for years. The arguments have ranged from whiny claims that the system is unfair to Republicans to goo-goo arguments that “garbage has no party affiliation” and that non-partisan elections will mean that goverment will only serve the public interest, and all other more petty concerns would fall away.

(I wonder what it says about our local Republican party that the only way that they think they can get their people elected is by hiding their party affiliation.)

First the fairness argument: despite the current make up of the council, the Republicans have been able to elect a mayor (one that had no Democratic opposition in the last election), and had a working majority on the council until 2005. It is obvious that when they find decent candidates, they can win. Because they, for the most part, haven’t been able to mount decent campaigns in recent years, they are demanding that the rules be changed? Like that’s our fault?

Oh, yeah, before you guys go an say, “What about Jim Pederson funding that ‘fair districts’ thing? I mean, isn’t that like you guys trying to change the rules?” The big difference is that was put up in front of the voters, this is an attempt by legislators to force Tucson to make a change that the voters have rejected in the past.

The other weak argument that is made is that somehow partisan, and thus political, concerns will then be removed from the policy making process. This is the sort of argument that appeals to good government liberals, so expect these guys to throw this one out there. I’ve watched elections other cities like Nogales and Bisbee, I’d like to challenge anyone to show me how non-partisan elections have made the election and policy process in those places less contentious and some how cleaner. And making an election non-partisan doesn’t mean that the parties don’t chose up sides, take a look at the last few elections in Phoenix, where the state parties have gotten very involved in the elections despite their “non-partisan” nature. The big difference here is that we are at least up front about it.

And taking the political parties out of it doesn’t guarantee that there will be competition where the voters can make choices out of a bigger variety of candidates. Take a look at this year’s school board races here in Pima County, where there was no competition in either Tucson Unified or Sunnyside, two of our largest districts.

To me, the most revealing thing is the timing here. Somehow, it is only when Democrats rule the council that partisanship is a problem. My evidence: I didn’t see any big push for this when Fred Ronstadt was on the council. If non-partisan elections are such a great idea for city elections, maybe Paton and company would welcome non-partisan elections for legislature?

I didn’t think so.