Here in Albany and Dougherty County, we have so many non-partisan elections that it’s impossible to tell where anyone stands on the issues unless they tell you. To many, that’s a good thing. Me? I’m not so sure. I’d actually prefer partisan elections for things like city and county commission, mayor, pretty much anything else except probably District Attorney. Why, you may ask?
Well, mostly from the unknown. After we elect folks to office in city or county offices, new problems arise. In our current system, it’s impossible to have determined if the official you just elected shares your values on something unless he’s already said so. Well, in the event of unforseen circumstances, knowing someone’s party can help serve as a barometer for where they’ll stand on an issue. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s better than what we’ve got now.
From a Libertarian perspective, I also feel that partisan elections help the party in the long run. Let’s take the case of a hypothetical City Commissioner named Joe Smith.
Commissioner Joe is a good commissioner. He’s a wonderful steward of the taxpayers and people like what he’s done for the town. Instead of allowing wasteful spending, he funnels tax dollars into law enforcement and the city is safer…people love him. So, he decides to run for the General Assembly where he feels like he could do some more good.
Now, he was sitting in a non-partisan seat, so when he announces that he intends to run for the General Assembly as a Libertarian, this is a bit of a shock to the voters. They wonder “why would he run as a Libertarian? Maybe he doesn’t think he could win the primary of the other two parties.” They automatically discount his candidacy.
So, let’s say he had won his seat as a Libertarian and he announces. Well, there’s the ballot access issues to deal with, but since he’s a beloved official already, there’s tons of volunteers to gather signatures and gather them they do. No one discounts his candidacy since he was a Libertarian the whole time. They know this has been his position all along.
Obviously, this is true for any third party as well. Maybe Joe is more of a Green Party kind of guy, or Constitution Party. Who knows. The point is, this is actually a benefit for him in the long run.
Now, I’m quite sure that plenty will disagree. There’s a great deal of thought that running for non-partisan seats initially gives the Libertarian candidate a base of support prior to running in partisan races. They can turn that support into the volunteer operations I outline above.
I would probably agree with them, if it weren’t for the perception of Libertarian candidates as being symbolic or worse. We can complain about ballot access laws all we want, but we need to do something first. We will never change the laws until we can get into power. To do that, we need to do something drastic.
I can’t help but believe that partisan elections might actually be the springboard to help make a Libertarian Revolution happen.
