All About Turnout – Part 3: The Partisanship Question

By GEORGE BROMLEY
Falls Church Times Staff

In Falls Church, elections for City Council and School Board always have been non-partisan.  Those who advocate moving City elections from May to November believe they will remain so.  Others have expressed their doubts.

Technically, an election is partisan only if candidates are nominated by the major parties, either via a convention or primary.  Such a process seems unlikely in Falls Church as many residents might be barred from running under such terms due to restrictions imposed by the Hatch Act.  But there are other ways in which partisanship could creep into a November campaign.

No one really knows what will happen if the elections are moved.  Partisanship might not surface openly for several election cycles, if at all.  However, recent trends indicate that local “non-partisan” politicians are already willing to advertise their partisan leanings and some of their critics are quick to apply partisan labels.

In at least one case, the label is fairly accurate.  In 2001, Councilman Dave Snyder ran for the Virginia House of Delegates as a Republican.  He was defeated by Jim Scott, who continues to represent the district in the General Assembly.

Since then, Mr. Snyder has been re-elected to the Falls Church City Council twice, most recently in 2006.  The affiliation evidently did not hurt him, as he was the top vote getter in both Council races.

Although he publicly broke with the GOP in 2008, he is still frequently identified as a Republican.  This might work against him were he to run in November.  Thus far it has not hurt him in May.

No one else on the Council has sought office as a partisan candidate, but several have openly participated in partisan politics.  During the recent fall campaign, five Council members appeared in two half-page ads in the Falls Church News Press on behalf of Delegate Scott, who was seeking re-election as a Democrat.

The only members of the Council who did not appear in the ads were Mr. Snyder and Nader Baroukh.  Mr. Baroukh has never indicated a partisan preference.

Several Council members also were active during the Democratic gubernatorial primary last spring.  Mayor Robin Gardner, Councilman Dan Sze and Councilman Lawrence Webb all endorsed Brian Moran.

Some have questioned whether officials elected in May elections should engage in such activities.  Falls Church’s Commonwealth officers also endorsed Mr. Moran and Mr. Scott, but they were elected as Democrats.  In any case, the endorsements served to identify the non-partisan officials with the party that routinely garners two-thirds of the vote in the City’s November elections.

Falls Church Democrats have seriously considered endorsing candidates in May.  In March 2006 the Falls Church City Democratic Committee voted 10-8 to endorse candidates in local, non-partisan elections.   The party reversed this policy in February 2008, but could change it again.

Identification with a particular party might be decisive, even if the candidates were officially running as independents.  Were the Democrats to endorse office-seekers, their election might be all but assured, given the voting patterns established here over the last 15 years.

Whether partisan labels are applied formally or only implied, November elections are inevitably dominated by national and state issues, which do not surface in May.  Raising national or state issues in the City elections presumably would not advantage the candidate raising them.

But in a fall campaign it would be harder to keep national and state issues out of the debate for City offices.  They would be referenced daily by the major media and very much in the public mind.  Although few if any of the issues would have anything to do with matters before local officials, it would not be surprising if candidates were asked their views and pressured to respond.

The local campaign could then largely be absorbed in the broader debate, with City issues consigned to a secondary role.  Candidates might become concerned more with identifying their opponent with one party or the other than in defining their own positions.  Some might even make their own endorsements for president, senator, or governor, further diminishing the local process.  The precedent already has been set in the open endorsements of Delegate Scott.

Such scenarios are speculative.  What is clear is that they have not occurred in the City in the past and most likely never would occur in May.

School Board Chairman Ron Peppe, probably the sole non-partisan office holder to have run in November, offered an interesting comment to the Falls Church Times on his experience:

“In my non-partisan election in Maryland, the highest vote getter credited part of her win to her bold proclamation of party affiliation on a mailing she did, even though it was a non-partisan race.”

“My parents, who were working the polls for me, said many people came up and asked “what party is he with.”  My biggest problem was that I was on the presidential election cycle, which meant a primary in February and general election in November, so it made for one long and more expensive campaign.” [October 26, 2009]

There is no prospect of a primary for local officials unless the national parties assume control of the nominating process, but a fall election could be more expensive than one waged in the spring.

Candidates competing for public attention against other, more prominent races might have to spend considerably more to campaign.  They likely would not reach everyone and some voters would come to the polls wholly ignorant of local candidates or issues.  There are three possibilities in such cases.

Some people might entirely refrain from voting on the local races, whether partisan or not.   This phenomenon may already occur in the voting for Commonwealth officers.   In the most recent election, persons running for the positions of Sheriff, Commissioner of the Revenue, and Treasurer received only 86% of the total votes cast, indicating that roughly one in seven voters chose to abstain.  They may have chosen not to vote because the candidates were unopposed, so it is unclear whether this trend would hold in a competitive local election.

Others, if handed a sample ballot by one of the major parties, might vote the straight ticket.  Although ticket-splitting is common, many people habitually vote party-line year after year and reflexively ask for the list before entering the polling place.  Such people tend to place a high value on endorsements made by the national parties and probably are more likely to vote in November, when partisan lines are clearly drawn, than in May.

Finally, some uninformed voters, declining a sample ballot, may whimsically vote for candidates for any reason or perhaps no reason.  Hopefully only a small minority of voters, in either November or May, would behave so capriciously.

Thus there are many aspects of partisanship that are difficult to assess.  While national parties could endorse candidates in May, they have not  done so in the past and there is currently no discussion of doing so.  How they would behave in November remains uncertain.

Almost everyone involved in the debate is on record as saying they are against partisan elections, regardless of what month they are held.   However, if Falls Church’s municipal elections are moved from spring to fall, positions may change with the season.

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Also see:

All About Turnout – Part 1:  Two Decades of Decline

All About Turnout – Part 2:  From Old to New and Red to Blue