Would nonpartisan municipal elections be better?

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – Is it time to erase the exclamation point that is associated with the local Republican and Democratic town committees?

CT News Junkie columnist Terry Cowgill thinks so. He recently endorsed nonpartisan municipal elections in which candidates would not be interviewed by a party vacancy committee and then endorsed by the respective town committees. Instead, he recommended that candidates get the required petition signatures to get on the ballot.

In October, he wrote, “Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that even local races, such as those up for grabs on Nov. 2, are becoming more contentious as national issues have crept into campaigns. It seems especially bad in Connecticut where, for some strange reason, it seems that all elections — from town registrars of voters to planning and zoning all the way up to the governor’s mansion — are partisan.”

“At this point in our history, the last thing we need is to encourage people to take their eyes off of community issues and look at their local elections through a national lens,” Cowgill added.

Gary Rose, the chairman of the Government Department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, stated in an e-mail message that he doesn’t agree with Cowgill’s position.

“The purpose of providing town committees with a significant role in selecting municipal candidates is to provide voters with a slate of candidates who 1) have been vetted with regard to credentials and 2) who will appear before voters with a party label which then serves as a useful voting cue to the general public with respect to policy positions,” he wrote.

“The proposal to have nonpartisan elections with candidates getting on ballots by way of petition is a recipe for disorganized local governance. It's also much easier to hold a party accountable, rather than a collection of individuals who are not part of a governing ‘team,” added Rose, who wrote a book earlier this year about Connecticut local government.

For the first time in 12 years, Brookfield had a third candidate for first selectman, as former Republican Austin Monteiro became an unaffiliated voter this summer and ran as a petitioning candidate. He annexed just 69 votes – 1.23 percent – finishing a distant third behind Republican First Selectman-elect Tara Carr and departing Democratic First Selectman Steve Dunn.

“I think that [nonpartisan balloting] would be the best approach to take for municipal elections,” Monteiro said in a phone interview with Brookfield Patch.

He said that as a petitioning candidate he could directly relate to the voters pointing to the Republicans as representing “the right” and the Democrats as representing “the left.”

“You could see from the mailings that to get their voters to the polls they were talking about national issues that had nothing to do with municipal government,” Monteiro remarked.

Carr stated in an e-mail message that, “Both Mr. Cowgill’s article and Dr. Rose’s response are interesting, and I’m sure there doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach to politics. Mr. Monteiro’s run as a petitioning candidate, although bold, I believe indicated that petitioning candidates are difficult for the electorate to identify with.”

“In addition to political parties providing vetted candidates, they also are great at mobilizing the electorate to vote, and giving them a baseline platform to which to identify,” she added. “Parties in local elections also add a modicum of order to the political process.”

Brookfield Republican Town Committee member Matt Grimes, a former chairman of that panel, said, “It is a double-edged sword. By running without a party, there might be more focus on the candidate’s resume and more information would be distributed on his or her qualifications. But without a party apparatus, there probably would be less turnout at the polls.”

Carr wrote that, “Simply having petitioners opens up the possibility of diluting the pool of possible candidates by offering perhaps several individuals who are so closely aligned in philosophies and viewpoints. In essence it becomes a foot race for each petitioner as to who is agile enough to get the most signatures turned in on time. The electorate then has little upon which to distinguish the candidates, ultimately resulting in candidates who may not be the best qualified to represent the locality, but just popular enough to get more support than the other petitioners, how many ever that may be.”

Monteiro said, “It is quite a task to get the signatures. Once you are on the ballot, it is a challenge because people are accustomed to going the traditional route of voting for a Republican or for a Democrat.”

Dunn said there could be some value in having nonpartisan elections.

“More than half of the towns in the United States, particularly west of the Mississippi, you don’t run on a party,” he declared. “[The candidates] just petition [to get on the ballot]. I think there is a lot to be said for that.”

He added, “It is based on skills and qualifications and not what their party affiliation is.”