Partisanship in Local Offices

Partisanship reduces the effectiveness of local officials. 

It stops people who might otherwise serve from doing so.

And it's irrelevant to nearly all the issues local officials address.

Jackson County is slow to  change.

I read the news today, oh boy, in the new local newspaper, the Rogue Valley Times. It replaced the newspaper I grew up with, the Medford Mail Tribune, a paper that got thinner and worse, and then finally died a year ago.

I like having a local newspaper. I like reading the editorials. Today's raised a question: Why aren't multiple Democrats filing for county commissioner? The Jackson County for All citizens group wants to increase the number from three to five. Will anybody file for the positions?

My sense is that part of the problem with the job is that it is partisan. People who seek the job become draftees into the nation's pitched partisan battle. Put a D or R beside ones name and enter the public arena and one immediately has enemies. Certain people enjoy that. Others don't.

I prepared this op-ed style comment to the Rogue Valley Times in response to their editorial:

Aren’t we all tired of nasty partisanship?

 

A Rogue Valley Times editorial noted that no Democrat has yet announced plans to run for county commissioner. The editorial hints at a real problem. Why aren’t we getting lots of good candidates rushing to file for the position? Part of the answer is partisanship. Partisanship makes the office unattractive to many people of good will. The Jackson County for All citizen committee is addressing that problem. The committee includes Democrats, Republicans, and Non-affiliated voters.

 

The Jackson County for All petition drive makes the commissioner job nonpartisan – just like every other county official. The second of the three ballot measures cuts commissioner salaries approximately in half from the current $143,000. The third increases the number of commissioners from three to five. Three commissioners was the number set in 1853, when the county census showed fewer than 4,000 people.

 

A stated goal of the Jackson County for All volunteer group is to allow the county’s unaffiliated voters to participate equally in choosing county leaders. Non-affiliated voters are the largest group in Jackson County. Using 2021 figures, there were 54,121 Nonaffiliated voters and only 45,515 Democrats and 49,285 Republicans. There were also 8,363 voters registered as Independent. Independent is a registered party and are in addition to the Non-affiliated. Under the current primary system, Non-affiliated voters don’t get to participate in choosing finalist county nominees in Democratic and Republican primaries.  Choosing finalists is sometimes when the most consequential choices of candidate gets made. The initiatives attempt to catch up to the modern reality that a great many people don’t like this era’s nasty partisanship, so they call themselves Non-affiliated. It's the fastest growing group.

 

Plus, there is the point made in the editorial. Who wants that job? 

 

Making the commissioner job nonpartisan will likely increase the potential pool of good candidates, people who are running for office out of a spirit of public service. I understand why people of good will are reluctant to file for a partisan office. The moment a person files as a partisan candidate, a third of the public has an instant aversion to them. Teams of people organize and raise money to pay for negative advertising to demonize that person. One becomes a target. One is also drafted into being a soldier in the national battleground of red and blue. We saw the transition with a local officeholder. As a nonpartisan mayor, Randy Sparacino was broadly popular from what I heard – a nice guy, generally acceptable to everyone. I didn’t hear mean things said about him. I didn’t hear him say mean things about other people. But when he became a candidate for a partisan office -- state senator -- his campaign thought it necessary to spend over a million dollars in this tiny media market on ads demonstrating that he was a loyal Republican at war with half the people in his district. That is the partisan game. What sane person wants to be part of that?

 

The issues commissioners face aren’t partisan. Commissioners, if they are doing their jobs and not busy protecting themselves from a primary election challenge, address issues with no partisan skew. Don’t both Democrats and Republicans want a working animal shelter? Are conditional use permits on rock quarry hours of operation a partisan issue? Are road grader maintenance schedules partisan?

 

We need not try to make the Jackson County commissioner job attractive by overpaying them. Instead, we should remove the partisanship that diminishes the effectiveness of commissioners in office and makes the job unattractive to people who think of themselves as citizens, not partisan warriors. Don’t we want people in office who get along with nearly everyone, people comfortable and on good terms with a wide variety of people?  I sure do.

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