In 2012, former Gov. Angus King won a five-way race to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate by touting his “independent” and “centrist” credentials. In this year’s race for governor, independent candidate Eliot Cutler is trying to do the same.
Terms like “centrist” and “independent” have been employed for maximum political advantage despite the fact that they are completely relative, cloaked in anonymity and devoid of substance. They conceal more than they clarify.
“Centrist” denotes equidistance from whatever is on either side. The term pays no attention whatsoever to 1) how far apart the two sides are from one another, 2) which among them might have moved recently and why, and 3) how much. “Independent” draws its indeterminate meaning only from whatever it is — again unspecified — with which the speaker chooses not to be identified. And when such “independents” refer to political parties as “special interests,” they misuse a term employed for decades by political scientists to denote a person, group or organization attempting to influence legislators in favor of one particular interest or issue.
Political parties play a vital role in modern democracies. They express a sense of membership and identification with other members of a like-minded community. They create structures within which ideas and concerns can be addressed. They sponsor mechanisms within which policies can be refined and positions formulated, reconsidered from time to time, and in which some sense of discipline can be applied. They offer opportunities to temper the raw egotism and arrogance that sometimes accompanies the charisma bringing aspirants to politics. Over time, parties sustain political processes through the cultivation of institutional memory more directly connected to the wider populace, not just the successful candidate cadre that comes to occupy the legislature or the executive branch.
The Hancock County Democratic Committee, to which I belong, has a standing communications and messaging committee that meets monthly, considers any issues members or others wish to bring to it, participates periodically in campaigns and pays close attention to developing platform statements. Because we have learned the processes of policy formulation within the party, we have had a significant impact on the platforms and their development. Twice in the past three years when we felt the need and had a powerful rationale, we have been successful in using the ultimate tool of party policy development: amending a platform from the convention floor.
Nobody needs to empower us to do these things; it comes from within. An unanticipated benefit of the clarity thus realized is that it has occasionally allowed us to reach out to rival-party members to try out our ideas and analyses and to work together where we can.
There is a difference between “party” and “partisan.” The former describes the entity, the latter the manner in which it sometimes seeks to advance itself.
People who tout their “centrist” and “independent” credentials seem unable to recognize that, in our nonparliamentary and election-of-the-chief-executive-by-plurality systems, parties are the sole basis for (1) grooming candidates over time and (2) organizing our legislatures. (After four years of trashing the parties, how smoothly does Cutler expect his relations with legislators to proceed should he by some miracle rise from the deepening polling trough in which he now finds himself?)
Prohibiting independent candidates or requiring registered voters to choose a party affiliation could never be supported. But if voters want to participate in a party primary, they can register accordingly (and always change it thereafter as often as they want). The idea of “open primaries” is a nonstarter to those of us who have invested years — often of struggle — in honing ideas and cultivating candidates.
To allow those who have not participated in this kind of long-term investment and commitment to swoop in and decide who the party candidates will be makes a mockery of the virtues and rewards — to say nothing of the challenges — of free association over time.
That said, is there room for reform? Of course.
How districts are drawn to prevent parties from partisan featherbedding through the creation of virtually incontestable seats or requiring a further vote so that plurality-only outcomes be decided by a top-two runoff both deserve serious consideration and thoughtful implementation.
The embarrassment and the policy regressions and reversals Maine has suffered over the past three-and-a-half years under Gov. Paul LePage, elected with 39 percent of the vote, need never be repeated again.
Hendrik Gideonse of Brooklin is a former selectman, retired educator and policy analyst. He chairs the Hancock County Democrats’ standing communications and messaging committee.