The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York's Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship

8. Not Your Grandfather’s Nonpartisanship

109 Not Your Grandfather’s Nonpartisanship “This is one debate the discipline has missed the boat on. . . . At best, political science data on the matter is scarce, outdated, and inconclusive.” New York University’s Costas Panagopoulos on nonpartisan elections, New York Sun, October ,  On November , , just days after the city’s referendum on nonpartisan elections, friends of the New York Public Interest Research Group gathered at the South Street Seaport for the group’s thirtieth anniversary gala. NYPIRG is the dominant voice of New York City’s good government community , owing largely to the seniority and savvy of Gene Russianoff, who joined the organization after graduating from Harvard Law School in . Earnest and affable, Russianoff is always prepared with a pithy quote for reporters, many of whom consider him the ultimate goo-goo: “a straight arrow” to New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, “a conscience of the city” to Village Voice muckraker Tom Robbins. NYPIRG receives much of its funding from an arrangement with the State University of New York and the City University of New York, but it also relies on individual contributors. Many of its biggest stars were on hand for the South Street Seaport fundraiser: Phil Donahue served as emcee, while Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, and Bonnie Raitt all served on the host committee , as did Ruth Messinger and Mark Green, the Democratic nominees for mayor in  and , respectively. (Green also spent ten years as a Naderraider in Washington.) Joining them on the host committee were Mark Dunlea, chairman of the New York State Green Party; Evan Stavisky, a Democratic political consultant; Eric Lane, Hofstra University law professor and a policy and legal advisor to City Council speaker Gifford Miller; and a 8 crowd of good government leaders, including Linda Stone Davidoff (Citizens Union), Rachel Leon (Common Cause NY), Barbara Bartoletti (New York League of Women Voters), Ludovic Blain (Demos), Joan Claybrook (Public Citizen), Gene Karpinski (U.S. PIRG), and Rob Ritchie (Center for Voting and Democracy). Many of the other names on the host committee read like a roll call of the city’s liberal interest groups: Mary Brosnahan Sullivan (Coalition for the Homeless), Matthew Chachere (Coalition to End Lead Paint Poisoning), Joe Cherner (Smoke-Free Educational Services), Margaret Fung (Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund), Andrew Greenblatt (True Majority and former head of Common Cause NY), Esmeralda Simmons (Center for Law and Social Justice), and Eddie Bautista (New York Lawyers for the Public Interest). An imperfect search through the voter registration records of the more than one hundred people serving on the committee turned up only a few Republicans. Finding a Republican among the city’s good government groups has become like playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?” My search for one on the board or senior staff of the Brennan Center for Justice, for instance, came up empty, even though its blog, called “ReformNY,” styles itself as the voice of good government in New York. A panel discussion on March , , organized by the Brennan Center and called “Reforming and Renewing American Government,” included no Republicans—and not even a moderate Democrat. Instead, the panel featured four leading liberals: Manhattan congressman Jerry Nadler, journalist and Bush administration critic Joe Conason, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, and New York Times editorialist Adam Cohen. By all appearances, good government reform has become too good for the Grand Old Party. The one good government group that still garners more than token Republican support is Citizens Union, which was founded not as an advocate for particular issues (as NYPIRG, the Brennan Center, and Common Cause were) but as an advocate for nonpartisanship in both government and voting. Before founding Citizens Union, progressive reformers had promoted nonpartisanship in voting by fighting to organize the ballot by office rather than party and by opposing the party circle. In the early s, many of them began advocating an additional step away from party-based ballots by removing both party labels from the ballot and political parties from the nominating process. They sought this change—called nonpartisan THE BATTLE OVER NONPARTISAN ELECTIONS 110 elections—only for cities, consistent with the traditional ethos of municipal reform (dating back to the s) that while state and federal governments deal with broader national and international policies that are properly the domain of political parties, cities should be administered by individuals who can apply sound business principles that are practical, not ideological...