Non-Partisan Elections -- Triumph of the Plutocrats
Fresh from the California coup d'etat, the plutocratic party of the US is trying to convince New Yorkers that municipal elections should be non-partisan. Republican Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire, has spend $2 million of his own money trying to get the voters to back an amendment to the city charter to abolish party primaries in the interest of better government. He means better government for people like himself.
Facing facts, any system where party bosses pick candidates to appear on the primary ballot and have registered party members vote on the choices is likely to produce careerism, promote narrow interests and keep out fresh faces. Tammany Hall, the very name oozes the stench of corruption, was in New York City. The problem is a very real one.
Proponents of the non-partisan approach suggest that the Democratic Party's hold on New York City (where Democrats are about 80% of the registered voters) is unhealthy. By getting party politics out of the nominating process, they claim, more
women
and minorities will be elected, outsiders will have a better chance at election, and the Democratic Party will be rejuvenated by competition into a more vibrant force by killing off the power of the party bosses.
The word "Bollocks!" comes to mind. There hasn't been a Democratic mayor of New York City for a decade, and the current mayor was never in politics before. If New York's mayor dies or resigns, the next person in line is a woman. A majority of the city council are minorities. In Chicago and San Francisco, where non-partisan elections are employed, Mayors Richard Daley and Willie Brown are among the most powerful in the country, and have been for years.
What the non-partisan approach does is replace clubhouse organizations with money. Name recognition and
cash
will be the new requirements for office. The change is not a pleasant idea. Replacing backroom wheeler dealers with rich and famous neophytes hardly sounds like an improvement. What it does offer is the institutionalization of the kind of electoral circus California just endured -- and New Yorkers will prove that not all the nuts live on the other Coast.
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