Injecting partisanship

by John Wynne, Politics NC, April 2, 2015.

There’s an interesting bill floating around in the General Assembly.Remember last session when the legislature made City Council races in the Town of Sanford partisan? Well, now they want to do the same thing, just to every county and municipality in the entire state. SB 650, dubbed an “elections transparency” bill, would make all school board races, city council races, and judicial races partisan affairs. That would be a change for many counties, whose ballots do not reveal the party affiliation of the candidates running in those contests.

What is the motivation here? My guess is there are a lot of local elected officials, especially in rural counties, who are Democrats but the voters don’t know it. Forcing their party affiliation to be revealed on the ballot would probably provide a boost for Republican candidates. For those who question the importance of local races, that’s where a lot of your state and federal candidates come from. Should this bill become law, Democrats would probably suffer losses.

Some would question injecting partisanship into races that some feel should be strictly nonpartisan affairs. Others would say, what’s the harm in providing more information to voters? (The bill is entitled “The Elections Transparency Act.” Alternatively, one could label it the “Voter’s Right to Know Act.”) Supporters say these races are already partisan, and not providing the party affiliation on the ballot is just an inconvenience to voters. After all, for most folks, the first thing they try to find out about non-partisan candidates is what party they belong to and what beliefs they hold. For now, this can only be obtained in a voter guide.

For those interested, the bill is 20 pages long, so there might be some interesting tidbits that haven’t yet been picked up by the media. This is not a local bill, so it would require the governor’s signature, or the lack thereof, in order to become law.

Should this bill get legs, Democrats will likely blast it as yet another example of the General Assembly inappropriately getting itself involved in the affairs of local governments. So, there could well be some political blowback. Interestingly, 2 of the 4 GOP House members defeated in the last election cycle were charged with helping the legislature intervene in the affairs of their respective counties. A bill doing the same thing, just for every county in the state, might make some legislators squeamish about perhaps biting off more than they could chew. Of course, what matters is what the voters think about all this. Informing the public, or injecting partisanship?