I had to chuckle today when I saw both the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and the Riverside Press-Enterprise editorially decrying political parties’ involvement in local, "non-partisan" elections this November (here we go again). According to the Press Enterprise, "Local elected offices are nonpartisan for a reason. These officials handle the nuts and bolts of local government: mostly practical issues that transcend party lines." Read it here. The Daily Bulletin lamented the parties’ involvement as a "loss of political innocence" (how’s that for an oxymoron?): "We’d like to see community races stay nonpartisan, with voters evaluating candidates’ skills, experience and ideas on specific local issues rather than their political alignments." Read it here.
So let me get this straight. The single most useful piece of information that most voters rely upon to help them decide whom to vote for — a candidate’s party affiliation — should be withheld so that the candidate can be evaluated entirely on the strength of, what, his or her resume? Or is the local press coverage so thorough that all the voter should have to do is read the paper? The Bulletin piece was actually commenting on the San Bernardino County Republican Party’s "surprising" involvement in a school board race in Upland. Read it here. While, as the article points out, "both parties are doing it," personally I’d suggest that in the case of the Democratic Party, it should have no reason to get involved in school board elections. That’s because the teachers unions tend to be adjuncts of the Democratic Party anyway, and they’re quite involved in those races. I actually tend to believe in a lot of cases it’s the Republicans who need to do a better job of bird-dogging school boards and influencing those elections. I wonder whether the Victorville Elementary School District would have been as likely to have given its superintendent a four-year, $1.2 million employment contract last June if the board majority had owed its election, at least in part, to the Republican Party. Read about it here.
And it shouldn’t stop with winning elections and majorities. The Party also needs to educate local Republican candidates and incumbents on how to govern as Republicans — to be fiscally responsible, to stand up to public employee unions, and to stand up to unelected administrators who view elected officials as hayseeds. Then when the unions attack in the next election, the Party defends those incumbents who’ve done right by the party’s principles. Other elected Reps are emboldened to see this play out — Republicans win, get re-elected, then perhaps move up the political ladder into higher office. That’s the whole point of getting involved with this local election business. And it’s why the Party’s involvement in "non-partisan" races will continue to increase. The press just needs to get over it.