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

12. Participation and Representation

183 12 Participation and Representation “Nonpartisan elections depress voter turnout. . . . The data on this is not challenged by any reputable political scientist.” Open letter to Mayor Bloomberg, February , signed by sixty-three elected officials, eleven union leaders, and various liberal advocacy groups and Democratic clubs In , the New York Times ran a profile on Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the city’s independent budget office, noting that “Ms. Lowenstein has sought to be scrupulously neutral, even switching her voter registration from Democrat to independent, which, she acknowledged, virtually disenfranchised her in her heavily Democratic Manhattan neighborhood.” Lowenstein is in good company: nearly one in five New York City voters is an independent—some , as of March , a group larger than the combined electorates of Baltimore and Boston and nearly  percent larger than the city’s Republican party. On election day, the choices that New York’s independents face for most offices are virtually meaningless because only one viable candidate is on the ballot. As Congressman Charles Rangel has written in explaining New York politics, “In general, winning the Democratic primary nomination is tantamount to winning the general election because this is an overwhelmingly Democratic town.” When thirty-year incumbent Marty Connor lost his State Senate seat in a  primary, he said of his opponent: “He’s the automatic winner. I never spent a nickel on the general election in my district.”3 In a functioning two-party system, independents are the all-important swing voters. But in a city in which one party dominates and party primaries are closed, such as New York, independents are largely irrelevant. Progressive era reformers, who championed political independence, would have been aghast at this development, and it is easy to imagine the nation’s founding fathers, themselves no fans of political parties, being equally appalled. Yet today, reformers in New York City defend the closed primary system and have little sympathy for those outside it. They say that independents, by choosing not to enroll in a party, have only themselves to blame. Ronnie Lowenstein opted to become an independent for professional reasons, but many voters who consider themselves to be independents (or even Republicans) choose to register with the Democratic party because they recognize that only by voting in the Democratic primary can they have any impact on the outcome of the election. Yet should any voter, whether independent, Conservative, Socialist, or Green, be forced to become a member of the Democratic party in order to participate in a meaningful, decisive election? At a public hearing of the  charter commission, Chairman Robert McGuire asked Harlem Democratic council member Bill Perkins what should be said to non-Democratic voters and candidates to encourage their participation, given that the Democratic primary is the decisive election in so many parts of the city. Perkins responded, only halfjokingly , “You should join the Democratic party.” Many Democratic officials felt the same way, even if they did not say so publicly. No Independents Need Apply In the  case Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that the right of association embodied in the First and Fourteenth amendments protects a party’s right to open its primary to nonmembers, as parties in nearly half of all states now do. The decision seemed to spell the end of a Progressive era New York State law prohibiting parties from opening their primaries. When the state’s Liberal party brought a federal suit in  to open its primary to non-members, it won. Yet the judge’s limited ruling has allowed the state’s law to remain on the books, and the State Board of Elections, controlled by the two major parties , continues to defend it. In , when the Independence party sought to open its primary to voters who were not enrolled in any political party, the events of  repeated themselves: the Board of Elections refused to comply and was sued in federal court. This time, the federal judge not only required the board to THE BATTLE OVER NONPARTISAN ELECTIONS 184 permit the open primary to take place, he also all but encouraged a broader challenge to the law. “The continuing existence of this statutory provision so directly at odds with the holding of Tashjian,” wrote Judge Jed S. Rakoff, “seemingly could have such a ‘chilling effect’ on the exercise of constitutional rights of association as would render it facially unconstitutional if such relief were...