News' View: Nonpartisan elections for New Haven
You may not have noticed that today is Election Day in New Haven. We don’t blame you. After all, general elections in this city have become little more than coronations — a preview of Inauguration Day in January — and today’s is no different.
Mayor John DeStefano Jr. will undoubtedly win his quest for a ninth term today, and he will be able to do it without your vote or ours. He is set to eclipse Richard Lee and become the city’s longest serving elected mayor next year.
Many of us are registered to vote in New Haven and know that the challenges facing our city — its streets, its...
It's not hypocrisy, it's just the realization that the traditional Democratic versus Republican divide is irrelevant when it comes to municipal politics. And yes, Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in New Haven just as they do in those other cities, but so what? Either we get a Board of Aldermen where 28 out of the 30 members are Democrats and one is a Green, or you get a Board of Aldermen with basically the same makeup. What is different is that everyone gets to participate in the process and the problematic force of the party machine is marginalized.
Good editorial, YDN.
Except non-partisan municipal elections aren't really non-partisan. In Atlanta, where I'm from, we've had a non-partisan Mayoral election featuring a fight over who is more of a Democrat. Most elections for the mayoralty evolve into the pro-Maynard Jackson machine Democrat and the anti-Maynard Jackson machine Democrat. Having party labels hasn't prevented the Board of Alderman from becoming organized in a similar manner of pro and anti-DeStefano forces (witness tonight's pro-DeStefano independent knocking off an anti-DeStefano Dem). How does dropping the labels change that? The Machine doesn't stop being the machine when you take the D off, and races won't start becoming competitive without the Scarlet R being afoot. If you want competitive races, you have to have people who are unhappy with the status quo and want to change it. New Haven elections are coronations because they seem, by and large, pleased with the DeStefano administration. The last time a heavyweight, Looney, challenged him in '01 he got stomped. Publicly financed campaigns give people a chance, but there's no demand. It may make the journalist's job more fun to have a challenging race, but the voters make the decision.
The reason cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and Boston are able to enjoy so-called "nonpartisan elections" is because the political majorities for each of these cities are so much larger than the minorities; this means they can force their will no matter what. If anything, the "nonpartisan" designation is merely an exercise in hypocrisy of a level not often seen even in Washington, DC.