Sen. Warren Daniel, Leave Our Municipal Elections Alone

Senator Warren Daniel may soon introduce a bill requiring all candidates for municipal elections to register with a political party—undermining local democracy.

Senator Warren Daniel’s alleged new bill is a naked attempt to undermine local elections by injecting national party politics into our municipal governments.

RALEIGH, North Carolina—The autonomy of municipal governments in North Carolina is being threatened by further partisan overreach. 

Senator Warren Daniel is prepared to introduce a bill requiring all candidates for municipal elections to register with a political party, according to information received by the Paper.

In an editorial published last week, staff at The Paper had this to say:

“First, and foremost, Sen. Daniel has no business getting involved in municipal affairs unless the municipalities ask him to do so.

The mayor, council members, and aldermen of these municipalities have been duly elected by town residents to look after town business.

If they decide changes need to be made in their election process, then Daniel should comply with their wishes and introduce the appropriate legislation.

But for a Raleigh lawmaker to impose his will upon municipal governments without their input or their consent is a perfect example of ‘government overreach.’

As the Paper rightly states, municipal elections should remain in the hands of municipalities (and local communities) and not become imperialized by national parties. 

Senator Warren Daniel’s alleged new bill is a naked attempt to undermine local elections by injecting national party politics into our municipal governments.

The editorial continues:

“Second, partisan politics should not be injected into municipal elections, just as they should not have been injected into school board elections.

As we saw earlier this year, longtime school board member Don Hemstreet, who is registered as an unaffiliated voter, was left out in the cold when the elections were turned into partisan contests.

Hemstreet, who has a decades-long record of public service, had to gather the signatures of some 2,500 registered voters just to earn a spot on the November ballot.

To make more elections partisan flies in the face of a growing trend of more and more voters registering as unaffiliated.

Here in Burke County, 22,406 voters are registered as unaffiliated, narrowly trailing registered Republicans at 23,579, and far ahead of Democrats at 12,446.

Making municipal elections partisan, as his previous bill did to school board elections, is corrosive to local democracy. It reinforces a political party duopoly that hardly represents the will or communitarian values of Burke County residents and other communities across Appalachian North Carolina. 

Plus, this bill could further entrench Burke residents under rule by the status-quo-minded party Senator Daniel currently belongs to. 

The genius of our local elections resides in the fact that candidates are directly from the community rather than selected by partisans propping up people who are more invested in their political party’s interests than they are in the well-being of our residents. 

What exactly is Senator Daniel’s motivation here?

It’s difficult not to see the new bill as anything but an effort to discourage voter participation and exclude candidates wishing to remain unsullied by partisan politics. 

Partisan elections encourage voters to be lazy and passive participants, booth entrants defaulting to the letter next to a candidate’s name rather than researching their character, political positions, and public service record. 

Part of why national and statewide politics are so unproductive and vitriolic is due to the two major parties distracting us with culture war red herrings. (I won’t perpetuate their perniciousness by listing any of those pet issues here.)

We tear at each other from across great geographical distances, exhausting energy on abstract arguments and online comment sections, while aloof politicians pay lip service to our basic needs. 

Local elections are often more fruitful because citizens are voting on concrete issues that impact their immediate community.

People can campaign for single issues without committing or resigning themselves to an entire party platform.

If you’ve attended recent county commissioners’ meetings, you’ve encountered the wide range of political affiliations held by people vocalizing their concerns regarding the Great Meadows Megasite, those protesting the continued presence of a white supremacist monument in downtown Morganton, or citizens supporting the restoration of passenger rail to western North Carolina.

Nonpartisan elections also enable people to choose between a smattering of electoral candidates without being pigeonholed by partisan constraints. 

Ultimately, by injecting national-level partisanship into another aspect of our local politics, we further chip away at one of the few bastions of relatively effective governance and representative democracy in the United States—and that’s what happens in our town halls and county board meetings.