New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has had a pretty bumpy
ride in office so far. His current poll numbers are among the
lowest ever recorded for a politician. A nominal Republican, he has
Democratic challengers salivating for a challenge in 2005, when he
is up for reelection. Already, at least three of them have raised
$1 million, a benchmark at this point for serious candidacies in
the city. Facing crippling budget deficits, Bloomberg has enacted a
few modest spending cuts and a blizzard of tax hikes — income
taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, cigarette taxes. He presides
over a city contending with great fiscal and economic challenges,
the glacial pace of rebuilding downtown in the aftermath of
September 11, and the continued specter of another terrorist
attack, and he has responded by banning smoking in bars.
But it might be time to give Bloomberg credit for something. He
is pushing a reformist initiative for what he calls “nonpartisan
elections.” The initiative would end party primaries and remove the
party labels from candidates in general elections for mayor, city
council, borough president, comptroller, and public advocate (a
bizarre office that is essentially a post for agitators). Cynics
think it is motivated by Bloomberg’s precarious political position
— a lifelong Democrat, he ran for mayor as a Republican and at
this point has few allies in either party. But Bloomberg was
pushing for nonpartisan elections during his campaign for office in
2001, so he is motivated by something more than his current
difficulties.
Either this November or next, the initiative could be put to a
referendum. Bloomberg seems to be leaning toward November 2004,
when voter turnout will be much higher for the presidential
election. Apparently he feels confident that the referendum will be
popular with voters, or else he would try to sneak it in this
November, when very little of import is being contested in the
city. Whether his confidence is well placed remains to be seen:
early polls show opposition.
Not surprisingly, the Democratic Party in New York is leading
the charge against the initiative. Democrats outnumber Republicans
in the city by a ratio of roughly 5 to 1, a stunning proportion in
a country that is evenly divided between the two parties. With the
Democrats’ funding and grassroots political apparatus, one can
readily imagine a major print and broadcast offensive against the
initiative over the next year or so. The Democrats will try to
convince voters that removing the party’s name from ballots will
constitute a sinister attempt to separate ordinary people from the
party that always looks out for them. They have suggested that
nonpartisan elections will make it more difficult for minority
candidates to win office; why this would be the case they do not
say, but as Democrats know, saying so is more than half the battle.
Democrats also argue that nonpartisan elections will make it easier
for wealthy candidates to win elections, since the removal of the
party label will favor those with greater name recognition. But the
party system didn’t stop Bloomberg, a billionaire who self-financed
his run in 2001, from winning the mayor’s office on the Republican
ticket against an identified Democrat, Mark Green.
While the Democrats’ opposition to the initiative is
self-explanatory, criticism has not been confined to that quarter.
The New York Sun, a conservative daily in the city, ran an
editorial opposing nonpartisan elections last week. This week, a
columnist for the Sun alleged that the initiative will
weaken neighborhood political organizations for both parties, which
are often involved in benign civic activities like blood drives and
picnics. But it is not clear how ending partisan primaries and
removing party identifications from the ballot would have such an
effect. The city’s overwhelming Democratic core is not going to go
away overnight, and will not shrink from the challenge that
nonpartisan elections would present. It is entirely possible that
nonpartisan elections would stimulate party activity even further,
as candidates would make increased efforts to let voters know their
positions and connect the dots.
New York City, which likes to pride itself on being advanced and
ahead of fashion, is still operating in the 1930s when it comes to
politics. Most people know about party machines through the history
books, but in New York the Democratic machine is still up and
running. A growing scandal in Brooklyn involving bribery and
judgeships is just another illustration of the corruption endemic
to a one-party town. Nonpartisan elections could, to borrow a
memorable phrase from Bloomberg’s predecessor, “blow up” the system
and offer some hope for change. Candidates would petition to get on
the ballot and would have to run on their message, not their party
affiliation. Name recognition would indeed be important — voters
would remember the candidates they liked. No wonder the Democrats
fear it so.
There is another compelling argument for nonpartisan elections,
and that is the poison of political parties themselves. Currently,
our national politics are about as partisan as can be imagined.
Politicians from both parties routinely defend fellow party members
or change positions to be in harmony with the national party.
Enormous energy is expended in attacking and weakening the other
party, as if Democrats and Republicans were rival cola companies
instead of organizations supposedly entrusted with national
leadership. The Democrats’ transparently opportunistic attacks on
President Bush over pre-war intelligence on Iraq are just the
latest example. The concerns that John Adams had about political
parties — that party affiliation would inevitably trump patriotic
duty — seems to have been borne out a thousand times.
Anything that erodes the hold of political parties on the
democratic process, particularly one-party rule in the nation’s
largest city, is worth supporting. If the nonpartisan election
referendum passes, New Yorkers should light up a victory cigar —
on the sidewalk, of course.
