Watching, reading and listening to the news these days is challenging. Most coverage of political events is a litany of grievances and finger pointing. This is obviously rooted in national news but is rapidly expanding to state and even local government. Our city councils, boards of supervisors, schools and special districts should be immune to partisan politics. In fact, unlike elections to federal and state offices, The ballot itself does not list the partisan affiliations of candidates for local office.
We need to keep some things in mind when considering the news alerts, bulletins and the charge/countercharge of the current public political discussion. I have some suggested guidelines for your consideration.
1) Don’t t believe everything bad in the country is the result of actions by former President Joe Biden and the Democrats or that everything bad is the result of actions by President Trump and the Republicans.
2) Likewise, don’t credit everything good in the country to one party or the other.
3) Take with a grain of salt assertions that big problems are easy to solve. They aren’t.
If they were they would already have been undertaken.
4) Nothing is free. Tariffs are a great example of this. While the government has received billions from the increased tariffs those gains were offset by increased costs to American consumers.
5) Partisan politics don’t belong in local government. We shouldn’t care if a local elected official is a democrat or republican. If the roads we drive on, the parks our families and neighbors picnic at, and the schools teaching kids how to read are well run with acceptable results we should keep that official on the job. If they are problematic elect new ones.
6) Most of all, remember that today’s political candidates often wage campaigns of charge/countercharge, without any thought of working together or even telling the voters accurate or even remotely truthful information.
We really need to keep the political poison of the national political discussion out of local government.
We have real examples of the encroachment of partisanship into local elections.
In the 2024 Modesto mayor’s race, there were three qualified candidates at the close of filing for office. All three were registered democrats. The local GOP committee had not found any republican to file for the office. But where there’s a will there’s a way. One of the three democrat candidates reached out to the GOP, or the GOP reached out to him, to change his partisan affiliation. The committee then called a special meeting to endorse his candidacy. But a problem emerged in their plan to have a GOP flag bearer on the ballot. The local paper ran a story pointing out some flaws in the candidate’s background. The GOP committee then acted to unendorsed the guy they had just endorsed.
Local democratic officials have the same partisan desire to have only people of their party in local office. A demo leader was speaking to a community group encouraging folks to run.
“We want to support you. we’ll help and work for you in the campaign. But remember, we only support people with a “d” behind their name.”
Where candidates stand on actual local issues is secondary to partisanship.
In 2024 ,local Stanislaus county civic leaders, under the leadership of Supervisor Mani Grewal, came together and formed the Stronger Valley Pollical Action Committee. The SVP has its own rules. It only gets involved in Stanislaus County local nonpartisan contests. The SVP supports candidates and issues that will enhance the economic development, public safety and accountability and transparency of local jurisdictions. The SVP will not, under any circumstances, become involved in partisan contests.
Local government does better when one’s position on issues weighs more than partisan affiliation. Strident no-holds-barred partisan invective is not conducive to problem solving, or even fact based discussion. Remember the words of Lenin. “You tell the lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.”
Instead, put people above the party and follow President Reagan’s advice regarding political statements from governments and leaders: “Trust, but verify!”
After all, Ukraine did invade Russia, right?
