More election stuff

You are honestly comparing a two challenger joint campaign versus a FIVE incumbent joint campaign? You are saying this is the same thing? Seriously?

Five incumbents running together is a very troubling thing. They can appoint whoever they want. Only insiders stand a chance in a system with a five incumbent bloc. Everyone else faces an almost insurmountable obstacle. The political patronage that can occur is troubling.

Based on what I have read, only Sharon and Katrina did some joint campaigning. I think it was some of OP insiders that lumped Brian in with them.

If Mayor Foy feels he can work well with the Carrboro BOA, perhaps it is time to merge the town governments ;)

Mark Peters wrote: "Only insiders stand a chance in a system with a five incumbent bloc. Everyone else faces an almost insurmountable obstacle."

If this is true, why did a challenger (and non-insider) win? Just because Chapel Hill didn't have a throw-the-bums-out year doesn't mean the system is rigged. From my perspective, the amount of turnover this year seems pretty normal for a small-town election with no huge divisive issues such as the development controversy that led to major incumbent losses in Chatham recently.

Mark Peters wrote: "The political patronage that can occur is troubling."

As Ruby Sinreich implies, the really troubling part would be resolving the putative problem raised. Any solution that included banning collective or individual endorsements by incumbents would run afoul of that pesky First Amendment.

I took the five-candidate slate to mean that each of the five considered the others to have a very similar political perspective to themselves. That's a fact worth knowing, but it's only one fact among many. The slate is also a double-edged sword. Anyone with a bone to pick with one member of the slate now has a bone to pick with all five. Voters are perfectly free to fill in fewer than the maximum number of ovals on their ballot, e.g. casting votes only for one or two challengers. Reports of the death of democracy in CH appear for the moment to be exaggerated.

So it's OK if only a certain number of people do it? What's the magic number? It has to be less than a quorum?

A group of incumbents constituting a majority on an elected body running as a bloc is "way out", even more so if they run a campaign together, even more so if they share a campaign manager. Two people running together doesn't bother me that much, less so if they are challengers. Challengers are underdogs in OC, as I am sure you well understand.

If this is true, why did a challenger (and non-insider) win? Just because Chapel Hill didn't have a throw-the-bums-out year doesn't mean the system is rigged. From my perspective, the amount of turnover this year seems pretty normal for a small-town election with no huge divisive issues such as the development controversy that led to major incumbent losses in Chatham recently.

This is not pertinent to the central issue of running as a bloc, particularly given that 4 of the 5 won and that the last one was a squeaker. Additionally, we don't know if they bloc extends to the other half of council seats that are elected in other years. Your statements ignore the power that a bloc of incumbents has when it appoints someone or adds someone new to their bloc at a later time.

the really troubling part would be resolving the putative problem raised.

?

Any solution that included banning collective or individual endorsements by incumbents would run afoul of that pesky First Amendment.

I don't recall suggesting banning this practice, so please point out where I did so. If we were to have a conversation on banning, then I will point out that election laws limit how money is spent, and money was spent to advertise the bloc in the form of postcards.

Reports of the death of democracy in CH appear for the moment to be exaggerated.

Nice strawman.

Want to explain what you are talking about here, Mark? “…even more so if they share a campaign manager.”

Incumbent Chapel Hill Town Council candidate Cam Hill listens as Tom Jensen, campaign coordinator for the incumbent candidates...

From: DTH

So - let's ban political parties??

Just the other day, I was having a conversation with a college graduate of this century and we were talking about "power politics" back in the day. I said that when I was in college I got a Christmas holiday job at the Post Office at the DC train station, but to get the job, "they" had to get a political "OK" from some party type back in Chicago. I indicated that back in the day, the winning presidential candidate usually made their party leader the Postmaster General.

Why would they want that job, they asked. Simple, I said, that's where the patronage jobs were and it gave true meaning to the line, "to the victors go the spoils."

So no Mark, no one is calling for a ban of political parties. They of course are organizational entities subject to all sorts of laws, but that's not what we had working; we had a party-like campaign. We also saw a departure from our political traditions - has any other mayor done what we saw this cycle? If not, why not?

What I wrote was this:

What I do have a problem with is when the five individuals who occupy the five seats appear to have agreed to a mutually beneficial campaign strategy, one that appears to diminish our ability to have a real debate or even a discussion of the issues. Diversity of opinion is a good thing, and we ought to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

Those who believe that we had a real debate or even a discussion have a different opinion from most of the people I've been talking to, and that's fine. But that also may explain why one can win a seat with 3,000 votes.

So, like my real politics example, should we expect that the various appointees to things will now come from the ranks of the victors campaign staffs and supporters. After all, the four incumbents only need one other vote to make most decisions. Even before the election, that was already being said about the Planning Board appointees who have close ties to the incumbents. Don't we want these boards to bring a variety of perspectives to the debate and not just be people who share the perspectives of the "deciders?"

Well said, Fred.

Our municipal elections are nominally nonpartisan. But this spirit of nonpartisanship is diminished when incumbent candidates all band together, thereby creating (or underscoring) incumbency partisanship. Such partisanship does not enhance political debate.

Ruby, I'm not accusing you of anything. I said that people have commented on the fact that recent Planning Board appointees have close ties to Council members. Is that not the case?

Thanks Ruby, but I don't know why you appear to be defensive about this. If John and Andrea also happen to be treasurers of campaigns, that in and of itself doesn't mean there's something amiss, it just means that people made the observation. Is it typical? I just don't know.

Fred,

From my observation if you volunteer to serve on Town advisory boards, as I have done for 8+ years now, you get to know a lot of the Council members. While that may not be the answer to your question, it certainly could be one.

I can speak to the Board of Adjustment-
WE (the Board) review the applications and make a recommendation to Council. Additionally, the sad truth is that there isn't a flood of applications to volunteer on Town Boards. People who are civic-minded tend to volunteer and they are the same people who try to get to know the elected officials because they ARE civic minded-not for any quid pro quo.

Thanks Del, that was also my experience the years I was on the Library Board of Trustees as a member and as its chair. I think the people who were making the observation about the PB were doing so because it struck them as different because it seemed more politically charged. As I said above, I don't know if this is typical or unique to the PB.

Challengers are underdogs in OC, as I am sure you well understand.

Challengers are underdogs everywhere in almost every election. Orange County has no special status in this regard. In order to argue that challengers face unusual obstacles in the county, you would need to show that there are special electoral forces at work that keep incumbents in office even when the electorate is dissatisfied. Perhaps you've shown this elsewhere and I haven't seen it.

This is not pertinent to the central issue of running as a bloc, particularly given that 4 of the 5 won and that the last one was a squeaker. Additionally, we don't know if they bloc extends to the other half of council seats that are elected in other years. Your statements ignore the power that a bloc of incumbents has when it appoints someone or adds someone new to their bloc at a later time.

My statements ignore the power of the bloc because no one has demonstrated that such power actually exists. 4 of 5 incumbents being returned to office would be a perfectly normal result with or without all the incumbents endorsing each other.

Anyone alleging that a monolithic group of incumbents actually did affect the election would need to show that the results were in some way unusual or that a surveyed group of voters confirmed that they gave the group's endorsements significant weight. No one who has cast aspersions on the group endorsement has given any evidence that this occurred.

Nice strawman.

Yeah, I know what a straw man argument is. Thanks. Maybe I was a little dramatic. You claim that you did not suggest any solution - this is true, but it's disingenuous to imply that you didn't ask for one by stating so forcefully that a problem existed. "There are many issues with such a large bloc," you said. "The political patronage that can occur is troubling," you said. "Only insiders stand a chance.... Everyone else faces an almost insurmountable obstacle."

Essentially, you're implying that a group endorsement by incumbents will prevent qualified people from running if they can't get approval from the "bloc" - a bloc whose primary interest is to remain in office and, you claim, suppress democratic debate, marginalize challengers, and mobilize smear campaigns. You're describing a political machine. And I think you'd agree with me that a government by political machine is not a true democracy. So I don't think it's a straw man argument at all.

I will agree that you didn't suggest that such endorsements be banned. In fact, if asked for a solution, you'd probably suggest that voters should discourage such tactics by voting against incumbents who use them. However, your earlier statements that these tactics create "an almost insurmountable obstacle" suggests that you don't believe voters would act in this way - that instead they would willingly follow the "bloc." In that case, what feasible solution do you propose? And what evidence do you have that the group endorsements materially affected the election?

Colin,

The bottom line is that there are many in this community who have serious concerns with bloc campaigns for the reasons stated previously. They don't want to see this blatant joint campaigning happen in the future (again, particularly when the joint campaign constitutes a majority of incumbents on an elected board). It will be interesting to see if patronage results from this. Patronage at its worst results in what Fred very eloquently described in his experiences or in a Michael Brown scenario (or dozens of other Bush administration examples). Dan Coleman's appointment appeared to be patronage to many.

There are many cases where communities have moved from at-large to district elections or imposed term limits to try to reign in the types of problems several have been describing here. The bloc here may or may not be benign at this point, but let's hope that we don't see it progress further. I think that Fred started the discussion to make sure that we don't progress any further down this bloc path.

M

Mark,

You seem to be asking people in a relatively small community who know each other to bend over backwards to disassociate themselves from each other during a campaign. This seems like a waste of time. Plus, after the coyness, they are still going to work together and/or appoint people they know and trust. What's the big deal? People can see who allies with who. They can read or go to forums or ask their friends (uh-oh, could be the start of another cabal..). I'm still waiting for somebody to point out what the electorate was deprived of.

Mark M., I don't think it is hard at all. When we had 13 or so candidates running (even though some were "aligned") there was discussion and even debate on the issues. We were "deprived" of that in this election, as those who follow these things know that the "Super Incumbents" don't all agree on every issue, but would you know that from their campaigns in this election?

It's a mistake to assume that potential voters are as aware of the issues as some of us are, and I was hypothesizing that some didn't participate because they didn't know the issues or where candidates stood. As one person noted, the four challengers were running against what was and not able to really discuss what could be.

You seem to be asking people in a relatively small community who know each other to bend over backwards to disassociate themselves from each other during a campaign.

Nice spin. I received a postcard with 5 incumbents on it. Positing my statements in that manner is disingenuous.

Another way to look at it is to think of the possible ways formation of a block could backfire and, beyond that, the effect on the "marginal" members.

As I said elsewhere, the formation of this year's block depended on considerable confidence that the voters were happy with things as they are. If any one seat was vulnerable, association with the block might have been beneficial Disclaimer: the totals for the 4th seat this year were so close that it's a bit of a stretch to talk about a "marginal" member of the block here.

But with more contentious pre-election debate and/or a stronger, more confrontational opposition, being a member of a block might mean you get tossed out with everyone else.

Question may be whether such coalescence into a block of candidates makes a bigger difference to a voter or to a candidate. The evidence suggests that there were a lot of instances in which voters were ignoring the block.

I don't hear Fred or Mark suggesting anyone dissociate themselves from one another. But in a small community such as ours there is a very fine line between running as a bloc (without acknowledging it publicly) and abusing power. Without citizens being vigilant and keeping their concerns out in the open, it would be very easy for us all to become complacent in the same way that Chatham County voters did until a couple of years ago.

The fact that this discussion is coming up after the election says to me that no one believes the line has been crossed but that it has been encroached upon and noticed. Next season we'll all be more attuned to the problem and hopefully, the incumbents will too.

But the citizens of Chatham took their government back from the Bunky block by running a block of their own.

I still don't get it - are we looking out for the poor ignorant masses who can't manage to understand what's going on? They are among the people that don't vote anyway. My brain is sliding over to one side of my head...

In nonpartisan elections, candidates are supposedly running on the merits of their individual ideas and accomplishments. The rigors of campaign debate tend to test and probe these ideas and accomplishments and, as such, can be helpful to both voters and candidates. Running as a collective gives candidates an easy "out" on issues as they can fall back on a party line and not have to do much thinking for themselves. There's nothing evil or even undemocratic about running in blocs, but it does tend to water down political debate.

I'm not going to join in this discussion because you're all doing such a great job of carrying it on without whatever meager contribution I might offer. I really appreciate following it though because I think it exemplifies some of what I love about living here. A safe and happy holiday to all.

Gary, you have been involved in local politics here a lot longer than I, so let me ask you, when in the past did we have five incumbents running for office? Second, when did a sitting mayor running for office aggressively endorse a full slate of candidates?

My training in political science taught me that when political behaviors deviate from the norm, ask why and try to determine what it means. That is why I raised the issue in the first place. Should we now assume that we have party like alliances without benefit of party names? Or, does it mean something else? Puzzling political behavior should cause to wonder who benefits, and some people gave me their opinions and they run from you and Mark M's "nothing" to those who believe it reflects something more substantial. Again, I'm just trying to understand what we witnessed this election cycle. It is healthy that we all might see things differently, don't you think?

Make that Gerry. Sorry!

Gerry,

Maybe I should have said, "A traditional justification for nonpartisan elections has been that candidates are supposedly chosen based on the relative merit of their ideas and accomplishments rather than their party affiliation." My point remains the same: incumbent partisanship tends to result in a dearth of meaningful political discussion and debate.