For many years, the League of Women Voters sponsored debates for statewide office in California. The fact that those debates are now sponsored by other organizations is a direct result of the widespread belief among Republicans that the League long ago forfeited its claim to non-partisan status because of the increasingly one-sided partisan activity of its members. To their credit, some of the League’s leaders have begun the process of trying to move their organization back. But they’ve got a big job ahead of them.
Last year, I gave a speech to the League on the question of money in politics. Although I was identified as a Republican, I made it clear at the outset that I had not come to the group with a partisan agenda. I talked about fundraising, campaign spending and about the declining interest in politics and government among young voters. On my way out, one of the members stopped me to thank me for my speech. “I was very upset when I heard a Republican had been invited to speak and I was going to boycott the lunch. But you’re not like the rest of them.”
The woman probably thought she was giving me a compliment. Instead, she underscored why her organization is viewed with suspicion when it asserts its non-partisan agenda.
The political reform group Common Cause is currently struggling with a similar challenge. A struggle between the organization’s national and state chapters broke into the open yesterday, when their national president appeared at an event with Arnold Schwarzenegger to endorse Proposition 77. Redistricting reform has been one of Common Cause’s top priorities for many years, but many leaders of the state organization fought to prevent their national leaders from supporting Schwarzenegger’s proposal. Opponents have listed several concerns they have with the precise nature of how new districts would be drawn under Prop 77, but it appears that their disagreements with Schwarzenegger on other matters is the driving force behind their opposition. The morning papers report that some of the members of the state board had threatened to resign in protest over the endorsement. Call me a cynic, but people committed to a cause don’t think about resigning over a dispute over how many judges should sit on a panel. Maybe I’m wrong, but that level of anger is more likely to be fueled by other problems with the governor that ought to have been set aside.
Kathay Feng, the group’s California executive director, is a good, smart person with a legitimate commitment to redistricting reform. I don’t know what side she took in this debate, or whether she took any side at all. But I hope her colleagues would take a lesson from their national leaders and decide that if they want credibility in other, upcoming reform efforts, it might help to remember that bitter, vengeful and abject partisanship are qualities best left to bitter, vengeful and abject partisans.