Partisanship in United States municipal elections (2018): Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 22:32, 10 October 2019
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2018 Elections By Date |
At the end of 2018, Democrats held the mayor's office in 61 of the country's largest 100 cities. In 2017 Democrats held the mayorship in 63 of the country's largest 100 cities and in 2016, Democratic mayors oversaw 66 of the 100 cities.
Out of the twenty-five mayoral elections that were held in 2018 in the country's 100 largest cities, three party changes occurred by year's end. In the election in Lexington, Kentucky, Republican Linda Gorton won the seat, replacing former Democratic Mayor Jim Gray. In Virginia Beach, Virginia, Republican Bob Dyer won the seat, replacing former independent Mayor Louis Jones. And in Chandler, Arizona, Jay Tibshraeny (R) was succeeded by nonpartisan Kevin Hartke.
In 12 of the cities that held elections, the pre-election incumbent was Democratic. In 10, incumbents were Republican. In three, incumbents were Independent or nonpartisan.
One 2018 race, in Phoenix, Arizona, was decided in a 2019 runoff election; mayoral control flipped from Republican to Democratic in the runoff.
Partisan stories are fixtures of political coverage at the state and federal levels, but they are more difficult to identify at the local level. While some cities conduct partisan elections for mayor and city council, elections for mayor and city council are nonpartisan in most of the 100 largest U.S. cities. This page tracked party control of local government in the those cities, identified changes in party control that occurred as a result of 2018 municipal elections, highlights municipal elections to watch, and describes the history of local nonpartisanship.
Who runs the cities?
In December 2018, the mayors of 61 of the country's largest 100 cities were affiliated with the Democratic Party.
However, the partisan picture at higher levels of government was different. Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate and House, trifectas in 26 states, and at least one elected branch of state government in another 16 at the beginning of 2018.
Note: Ballotpedia used one or more of the following sources to identify each officeholder's partisan affiliation: (1) direct communication from the officeholder, (2) current or previous candidacy for partisan office, or (3) identification of partisan affiliation by multiple media outlets.
Changes in party affiliation
Democrats held the mayorships in 61 of the country's largest cities as of December 2018. Twenty-five mayoral elections in the largest cities were held in 2018. By year's end, three party changes had occurred. In the election in Lexington, Kentucky, Linda Gorton, affiliated with the Republican Party, won the seat, replacing former Democratic Mayor Jim Gray. In Virginia Beach, Virginia, Republican Bob Dyer won the seat, replacing former independent Mayor Louis Jones. And in Chandler, Arizona, Jay Tibshraeny (R) was succeeded by nonpartisan Kevin Hartke.
Note: Although Linda Gorton is a registered Republican, she told the Lexington Herald-Leader she saw herself as an independent in a story published May 18, 2018.[1]
Battleground election summary
- See also: Battlegrounds
Nashville special mayoral election
Acting Mayor David Briley won the special mayoral election in Nashville outright by receiving 54 percent of the vote against 12 challengers on May 24, 2018. Conservative television commentator and former Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain finished second with 23 percent, and at-large councilwoman Erica Gilmore was third with 6 percent.[2]
Briley completed the term of his predecessor, former Mayor Megan Barry, which ended in August 2019. Briley was elected vice mayor in 2015 and became acting mayor in March 2018. Heading into the election, he enjoyed the support of 29 of the city’s 39 Metro Council members, as well as the endorsement of the Nashville Business Coalition.[3][4]
The election was needed to fill the vacancy created when former Mayor Barry resigned on March 6, 2018. Barry pleaded guilty to felony theft charges relating to her affair with the Nashville police officer in charge of her security detail. She agreed to resign as part of her plea agreement on those charges.[5]
San Francisco special mayoral election
San Francisco held a special mayoral election on June 5, which became necessary after former Mayor Ed Lee died of a heart attack on December 12, 2017. His term was not set to end until 2020, and the winner of the election will serve out the term's remainder. San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed won the election.
Breed was immediately appointed as acting mayor after Lee died because she was the board of supervisors president. However, one month later the board voted to remove her and replaced her with fellow member Mark Farrell, who served as interim mayor until the special election. Board members cited the desire to have an interim mayor who was not running in the election, since Breed would have had the potential advantage of running as the incumbent. But members of the black community attended the meeting to support Breed, a black woman, and forced it into a temporary recess at one point. Fred Jordan, president of the African American Chamber of Commerce, told the San Francisco Examiner the decision was disrespectful to the black community.[6]
The election also saw multiple lawsuits of one candidate against another, with candidate Angela Alioto suing Mark Leno to stop him from accessing public funding for his campaign, and Leno suing to remove Breed's title of "acting mayor" from the ballot after she was removed from the position by the board.
A Ballotpedia survey found that many of the mayoral candidates saw themselves as either moderate or progressive. Click here to learn more.
History of local nonpartisanship
The party system is central to state and federal politics, so it might seem puzzling that so many cities run nonpartisan elections. Why is nonpartisanship the norm at the local level when it's the exception higher up the ballot?
Nonpartisan local elections were part of a broader push for changes to municipal government during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's Progressive Era. Concerned about corruption, one-party rule, and party bosses and machine politics in the cities, Progressives pushed to change the way cities were run. Their proposals included increasing access to citizen initiatives and the option to recall elected officials, replacing elected officials with city managers, and implementing nonpartisan elections.
Advocates of nonpartisan elections say partisanship is irrelevant to much of the work of city government. As a (possibly apocryphal) maxim commonly attributed to Progressive leader and New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia goes, "There is no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage."[7] According to the National League of Cities, supporters of nonpartisan elections also think they encourage cooperation between members of different parties.[8]
Opponents of nonpartisan elections argue that they confuse voters who could otherwise use party labels to help guide their local election decision-making. As the National League of Cities notes, proponents of partisan elections worry that leaving party labels off the ballot could encourage voters to use other cues, such as the apparent ethnicity of candidates' names, to guide their votes. Partisan election supporters are also concerned that the absence of party-organized efforts to bring lower-class voters to the polls could skew local elections in favor of higher socioeconomic status candidates.[8]
Footnotes
- ↑ Lexington Herald-Leader, "Why former vice mayor Linda Gorton wants Lexington's top job and what she's promising," May 18, 2018
- ↑ Davidson County Election Commission, "May 24 Election Results (Unofficial)," accessed May 25, 2018
- ↑ The Tennessean, "David Briley wins Nashville vice mayor race," August 6, 2015
- ↑ The Tennesseean, "29 Metro Council members endorse David Briley's run for Nashville mayor," April 25, 2018
- ↑ The Tennessean, "Nashville Mayor Megan Barry pleads guilty to felony theft," March 6, 2018
- ↑ San Francisco Examiner, "SF supervisors select Mark Farrell as interim mayor to replace London Breed," January 23, 2018
- ↑ Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship Series, "Why is There no Partisan Competition in City Council Elections?: The Role of Election Law," 2007
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 National League of Cities, "Partisan vs. Nonpartisan Elections," accessed August 15, 2017
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