Last November we were told that changing to nonpartisan races in King County would be good for Democracy. So the filing deadline passed last week, and for the executive race there’s going to be some heated competition. But look at the situation in the rest of the King County races:
Sheriff Sue Rahr and County Councilmembers Bob Ferguson, Kathy Lambert, Julia Patterson and Pete von Reichbauer will be unopposed. Councilmember Reagan Dunn will face Party of Commons candidate Mark Greene and financial-services trainer Beverly Harison Tonda.
Woo, feel the white hot heat of competition. 1 race where there’s any contest at all, and I’ve never heard of Greene or Tonda (not saying they aren’t pillars of their community, but as a Seattle boy with North King County and Vashon roots, I don’t know anything about either of them). Now, in a year when none of the incumbents left, there wasn’t going to be a bumper crop of candidates. Still I think there are a few recent developments that heighten the power of incumbency:
We’re a 1 paper town now. As much as the blogs and weeklies and the online Pig’s Eye are picking up some slack, in many ways if the Times doesn’t cover a story, that story doesn’t happen. If you’re an aspiring candidate trying to break news that a lot of people are going to see, you have the TV, or the Times, and neither is probably going to be particularly good at in depth coverage of County Council races.
But more interesting to me, as a partisan hack is that the parties have less of a dog in these fights. Oh sure, we all know whose the Democrat in nonpartisan races and whose the Republican, and will long after the people elected with letters after their names have left office. Still, there’s less institutional incentive for the Republicans to find some suburban business person to take on Ferguson or for the Democrats to find someone to fight the good fight on the Eastside. For all the bashing of parties that we do here in Washington and in the West, they play a vital role in recruiting and supporting candidates, and I wish in King County we hadn’t decided to pretend otherwise.
Prior to becoming involved in politics, I shared the opinion that non-partisan was better.
But then reality sets in.
To get elected, you have to “find your tribe”, meaning build (or buy) your social network. The biggest, best, most organized tribes are still the parties. Further, a huge benefit of the parties is the vetting process. (Ditto the media, interest groups, 501c3 orgs, etc.)
It’s non-obvious — and perhaps counterintuitive as well — but making elected positions non-partisan increases the costs of campaigning, such that only the well-financed can mount a viable challenge.
The end result of non-partisan races is incumbency protection. (It’s not to conclude, while the Republican brand is becoming ever more toxic, that Pete von Riechbauer’s motivation for I-26 was to protect his own council seat.)
Again, after my personal experience, and watching our reps in action in Olympia, I now have the opinion that politics should be more partisan. The electeds are already far too comfortable with each other; they have far more in common with each other than with the voters. Making positions non-partisan reduces their need to fight each other, and we the voters are worse off.
The only reason non-partisan KC positions ever reached the ballot: a couple rich, eastside Republicans who thought their guys could have a better shot at winning the (virtual) majority back from Democrats.
Billionaire John Stanton was also considering a run – but he has Puppet Hutchinson in there now.
Two rich Republicans affecting the make-up of a legislative body, and discouraging participation in democracy. Typical.
I fail to see the objection to non-partisan elections. Is there anything in that format that prevents parties from supporting whoever they want or preventing the candidate from being endorsed?
The local dem party is pretty effin ineffective. The Repricans have shrunk to an irrational remnant. The Dems …. just look at the mess ,, we have a useless Lt Gov who prevents Gregoire from moving to DC, a formidable actor serving as the rep (Sunny Jim) fort most of Seattle .. a safe seat that COULD support someone a lot more effective, we have NO candidates being groomed for Seattle Mayor??????????????????
@3 – The solution to ineffective parties is to weaken them further?
I regret the lack of competition in county council races as much as the next person, but I don’t think that the very recent change to make the positions non-partisan created this problem. The first round of elections to the modern county council occurred in 1992 or 1993? If memory serves, Jane Hague, Pete Von Reichbauer and Larry Phillips all won seats that year. They are still serving on the council and have had no serious competiton in the last … what? 15 years?
A better explanation may lie in the power of incumbents to accumulate a war chest of campaign money. Any challenger has to face the prospect of raising an enormous amount of cash – quickly! These council positions pay very ,very well, BTW … thus motivating councilmembers to work those phones, stash that cash, for job security. Frankly, I think money has more to do with the high level of incumbency that non-partisanship.
/deb eddy
@4
What does a party mean when it is (merely) an arbitrary coalition of folks willing to work together because the other side is goofy? Isn’t that sort of colaition politics what undermined first the Rooseveltian Dems and then the Reagan Reps?
Do you remember HOW we got parties in the first place? The founders were opposed to partisan politics. Jefferson ran against Washington’s legacy on a fairly specific set of issues related to infividual freedom. Organization into formal parties cam later.
Today’s Repricans, DO represent an ideology .. even if that ideology is more quicksand than firm ground. The Dem party, at least here, seems to me to be a lot LESS idea based and more of a motley coalition of interest groups defined by opposition to the radical religion party.
Worse, our WA state leadership …. the three top ladies, the Lord Mayor and the rest seem to have no concept of gr4ooiming their own successors … very different from the days of Maggie and Scoop. I have no more reason to believe that they are growing good candidates than I did that the GM of yore would ever figger out how to make cars.
OTOH, the country race actually looks like it could be interesting. At least four of the candidates bring interesting and quite different ideas to the table.
If the Dems want a voice in this, then they need to hold an old fashioned convention or meet in a bar and endorse the one they like!
@5 – I don’t (yet) know how big of role money, tenure, districting, social network, “winner takes all” elections, etc. play in protecting incumbents.
Honestly, I don’t know if the details of the game matter. In any game, the rich get richer, it’s just pure mathematics. Fortunately for us, our predecessors were saavy enough to deliberately create a middle class by a progressive redistribution of wealth. Alas, our current leaders have yet to embrace progressive policies.
Maybe the only “fix” is to a) recognize the natural phenomenon and b) periodically change the rules, so that there’s some kind of reset, giving everyone a fresh start.
I’m confident that should we choose, it’s pretty easy to expand political participation. Public financing of campaigns would definitely level one facet of the playing field.
@6 – The founders were not yet aware of Duverger’s Law.
From my observation, there definitely is a “farm system” for grooming future talent: Young Democrats of America; the legislative district, county, and statewide parties; working on campaigns; public service; working for legislators.
The trick is you first have to show up. I know how hard that is. I was completely non-political. When I finally decided that I had to start pulling my weight, it took me about at least a year just to figure out that we had legislative district party organizations that I could join.
Here is democracy in action.
Deb @5, another factor favoring incumbents is partisan redistricting. King County mimicked the Legislature in turning redistricting over to a partisan committee, which they control, with the goal being to create as many one-party districts as possible (split as evenly as possible between D’s and R’s), leaving few swing districts.
Somehow, some way, I fully expect the newly-minted “non-partisan” county council to continue redistricting in the same spirit as before. Why should they mess with a Good Thing (good for themselves, of course…)?
&. Jason I did not say that a party CANNOT function. The Reprican party may have defined itself as something nearly meaningless BUT it does function.
The Dems? I think you misunderstand … political parties are not and must not be democratic! Parties need leadership, not representational democracy. The Dems do have a sort of democracy but the party is leaderless.
Look at it this way, I respect Sen. Murry. I would be VERY supportive of a protege of hers who wanted to be KC executive. Fat chance she will take any stand. Same issue here on Cap Hill.
Similarly, I would LOVE to see a Murryite (or a Simsian) replace Micky D. To make that happen a party leader, perhaps sen Murry, would need to play Godfather, get Jim to move on … maybe as ambassador to an African Country tareeted by the Gates?
Working within the Dem party is not a very good way to get elected because that requires $$$. The party, however, lacking leadership, can not efficiently spend its dollars.
Imagine, if you can, that Goldy wanted to run gor Congress as MickyD’s successor. Suppose the other primary candidates were pretty much the set of folks now running vs. Nichols. Just for fun, add in the usual Naderite and Sierra Clubber. And to make the point, lets say Paul Allen decided to run Ken Griffey.
A primary like that would likely be determined by MONEY. How valuable would Goldy’s party ties be to raising money so that he could win the primary? ?
I am far more enthusiastic about the blogger community, Move On, Deep Blue, etc than I am about the arthritic dems.