NON-PARTISANSHIP DOESN'T WORK
Wright, Charles Alan
Non-Partisanship Doesn't Work By CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT Minneapolis IN THE November Progressive Richard Neuberger made a powerful criticism of the low estate of local legislatures. With this...
...The concensus, then, is, overwhelmingly opposed to non-partisanship in the legislature...
...In the primary, it is nearly all a matter of name familiarity...
...But wasn't it more important that the nation was at a point of economic crisis, and that the people wanted, in the State Capitol as well as in Washington, a new approach to their problems...
...Luther Youngdahl won the support of voters of both parties by his "humanitarian" program, as intelligently liberal a program as has ever been offered anywhere by a Republican administration...
...The voter who is willing to make a great effort, can, occasionally, get some inkling of the political philosophies of the would-be legislators in his district...
...The voter becomes confused, discouraged, and eventually cynical...
...If other states profit by the Minnesota experience, they will avoid the sad mistake of abandoning the party label in electing their legislatures...
...It also shows a lack of responsiveness...
...In the last Presidential campaign we were frequently exhorted to "preserve the two-party system...
...II Not only does non-partisanship fail to give the advantages Mr...
...Look at the men who have served in our partisan Congress for 25, 30, or 40 years...
...Non-partisan election of state legislatures will have exactly the opposite result...
...Every governor of Minnesota since 1919, save one, has urged a return of election of legislators on a party basis...
...Such a solution doesn't seem revxv lutionary or daring in Minnesota, where the voters put the legislature on a non-partisan basis in 1913...
...I thank him for his very illuminating answer...
...Voters make yeoman efforts to smoke out the candidates on specific issues...
...One of the real advantages of a federal system is that it provides 48 laboratories for experimentation in government...
...In the last legislature one of the major issues was an FEPC...
...True—and yet just as true in partisan elections...
...Prof...
...Warren of California has never had a liberal legislature to adopt his program, even though California has partisan elections...
...Wright diagnoses the right disease but he often specifies the wrong remedy...
...Wright's cogent arguments, but his reasons often are fallacious...
...But when the corollary is, as it has been here, that individuals can rarely move their activities from one area to another, the advantage seems less clear...
...And what of the legislature, chosen by party labels, that has balked liberal Gov...
...Organized labor has favored a partisan legislature since about 1927...
...Each candidate announces his own personal program and makes his alliances, open and secret, with anybody from whom he can get political support and often with persons of political views different from his own...
...I don't...
...One of the reasons which contributed to Youngdahl's decision to resign as governor and take a federal judgeship must have been the lack of sympathy, even insolence, with which the 1951 legislature greeted his proposals...
...Very few voters bother to consult the answers to these questionnaires, however, and when they do, they find that most answers are of the "maybe yes, maybe no" variety...
...It is difficult to hold a legislator responsible when he is bound to no program...
...Neuberger predicted for it, but it causes a number of serious difficulties...
...In a non-partisan election the incumbent holds a tremendous advantage, because of the familiarity of his name...
...With this criticism no informed person will disagree...
...But Youngdahl, like Olson before him, was hampered by the failure of the legislature to reflect the liberal mood of public sentiment...
...Yet as long as preponderantly international issues dominate people's opinion of the two major political parties, I believe that partisan selection of state officials is a mistake...
...In 1946, 1948, and 1950 Minnesota elected as Governor one of the most respected and able chief executives in the history of the state...
...Eisenhower's coat-tails last Nov...
...The League of Women Voters has recently joined the groups urging a return to the party label...
...The candidate who is not bound by a party platform on any issues, will not risk alienating possible supporters by taking a stand on any...
...The government falls into the control of a guild of job holders who have little in common except the mutual desire to perpetuate themselves in office...
...I live under a partisan legislative system and think partisanship should be eliminated...
...Wright...
...And an individual member can use the pressure of the party as an excuse for saying "No" to a special-interest group...
...Wright attributes to Minnesota's non-partisan legislative elections the fact that liberal governors never had liberal legislatures to adopt their programs...
...The forces which were opposed to FEPC succeeded in amending the law in the House to the point where there was no possibility that the Senate would consider it...
...Wright's rejoinder interest me...
...Many may think it desirable that the partisan and non-partisan areas of government be effectively divorced...
...4 because of their party labels...
...The voter wouldi have to have all this background before he would know that those who are on record for FEPC really opposed it, while those who voted against it actually favored it...
...But this is no longer an advantage if the experience with an experiment in one place is ignored elsewhere...
...Wright lives under a non-partisan legislative system and believes partisanship should be restored...
...Prof...
...The great political parties of the state have agreed for twenty years that the legislature should be partisan...
...Then, of course, they voted for passage of their bill while the real friends of FEPC were forced to disown the bill and vote against it...
...One of Minnesota's outstanding governors, Theodore Christianson, long after he was finished with politics, made what seems an accurate evaluation of the non-partisan legislature: "Without party responsibility and a reasonable amount of party discipline democracy degenerates from an orderly method of government into one motivated by individual ambition...
...The party, on the other hand, does have a platform and a collective responsibility to that platform...
...Charles Adrian, of Wayne University, concludes a penetrating 400-page study of Minnesota's experiment with non-partisanship by saying...
...Nor do I believe non-partisanship is responsible for all of Minnesota's legislative ills, any more than partisanship is responsible for the legislative ills of California or Michigan...
...What have Korea or the United Nations or UMT possibly got to do with school reorganization, state property taxes, or conditions in the mental hospitals and prisons...
...One sentence in his statement runs: "In a non-partisan election the incumbent holds a tremendous advantage because of the familiarity of his name...
...He regards it as healthful that liberal state legislators were carried in on F.D.R.'s coat-tails because of their party labels...
...Wright forgets that the primary is often the decisive test in at least half the states,, because half the states are dominated exclusively by one party or the other...
...Neuberger, however, didn't mention the Minnesota experience in the course of his argument for abandonment of the party label...
...Is he equally pleased that .many reactionary state legislators were carried in on Gen...
...in Minnesota it is not, for the non-partisan legislators are so far removed from the political parties that they are unlikely to be given the partisan prizes which a party can bestow...
...Where the incumbent is standing for re-election, one can, of course, take the trouble to look up his record in previous sessions...
...The Minneapolis Tribune and the League of Women CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT is assistant professor of law at the University of of Minnesota...
...Indeed, the only support that can be found for the present system comes from those members of the legislature who feel that their influence, or their chances for re-election, would be weakened if they had to run under a party label...
...Lobbies for the utilities, for the railroads, the Minnesota State Employers Association, and many others can and do influence the final voting on much of the proposed legislation...
...If a candidate without these advantages feels that he must have a program in order to be elected, he is likely to hit on such a vital matter as demanding that Minnesota football games be televised, and make this his sole campaign plank...
...Several points in Prof...
...But he went on to propose what he called a "revolutionary and daring" solution: election of legislators on a non-partisan basis...
...Finally, Prof...
...There is an excellent reason for not mentioning Minnesota: non-partisanship here was a noble experiment, and, like that other noble experiment of the same era, it has been a complete failure...
...I regard coat-tails as a poor way for anyone to get elected, be he liberal or reactionary...
...I appreciate the interest and attention my article has stirred, however, in someone as informed as Prof...
...Neuberger believes that non-partisanship would lead to more attention being given to the views which a candidate has on local issues...
...Neuberger laments the fact that, "When- Roosevelt was in his heyday, many able Republicans were washed out of legislatures by Democratic freshets...
...Adrian concludes "The voter apparently did not know how to give him a legislative majority...
...Of course the party label is not a guarantee against the wiles of lobbyists...
...I agree with many of Prof...
...Further, the political parties in the state have been seriously weakened...
...The cooperative movement in the state supports party designation of legislators, as does every important newspaper...
...Log-rolling and extravagance are one result, as each legislator gets all he can for his own district, and blames other members for the huge total of expenditures...
...Another flaw which the Minnesota experiment has uncovered is that, in the words of the League of Women Voters...
...During the 1930's Minnesota three times elected as Governor by decisive margins the radical Floyd B. Olson, but he never was given a working majority in either house of the legislature...
...In the report mentioned earlier, Prof...
...Prof...
...But it is much easier to buy an individual than a party...
...Does he think New York or Philadelphia, with partisan city officials, has as good government as Seattle or Cincinnati, where there is no partisanship...
...Richard L. Neuberger State Senate of Oregon Salem, Ore...
...It would be in the best in- lerest of good government in Minnesota if the non-partisan system, so far as it applies to the legislature, were to be abandoned...
...Wright seems to think partisanship—or the party label, if that is a better term—ranks as a panacea...
...How does he account for the fact that liberal Gov...
...Neuberger Replies PERHAPS it is a case of distant fields seeming greener...
...The election becomes a mere popularity contest, in which victory goes to the candidate who possesses some advantage such as having been an Ail-American football player at the State University, or having a good Irish or Scandinavian name...
...After all, every piece of string has two ends...
...Most city councils in America are chosen without regard to party affiliation...
...Wright suggest that they be returned to the partisan method of election...
...Prof...
...The result is that the legislature is dominated by veterans, usually with conservative tendencies, jealous of liberal governors who seek to exercise real leadership...
...Ideally, the legislature should be a training for the governor's mansion and for Congress...
...But this is often misleading...
...Would Prof...
...Isn't it silly to elect a Governor who is committed to the principles and proposals of his party platform and make him dependent upon a policy and law-making body which is responsible only to the conscience of the individual member...
...Ill The non - partisan legislature shows a lack of responsibility...
...Of course the Roosevelt coat-tails helped...
...The experience in Minnesota is that the best way to be elected to the legislature is to avoid expressing any views on any issues...
...At Yale, where he received his law degree, Wright was a student of another contributor to The Progressive, Fred Rodell...
...Prof...
...special interest groups exercise a disproportionate amount of influence for lack of any political party organization...
...Williams of Michigan...
...In states where the party label was used, the voters did know how to turn out the Old Guard...
Vol. 17 • January 1953 • No. 1
