Opinion: Cities as partisan prizes

Florida Democratic chairman Scott Maddox has pledged to rebuild the party by promoting new political talent, but his sizeable investment in city politics this year may promote something else. It likely will escalate the bidding war between Democrats and Republicans over jobs that are, by local charter, nonpartisan.

This may be entertaining for the politicos, but will it help cities pick up the garbage?

Maddox is a former Tallahassee mayor who doesn't need to be lectured on the unique characteristics of city government. Cities deliver services, such as water or sewer or recreation, and their policies are established by people who are elected not as Republicans or Democrats but as civic stewards. Most city residents wouldn't be able to identify the political party of their mayor or commissioner, which is a virtue, not a liability, of their form of government.

With term limits forcing state officeholders to sate their political appetite through local elections, though, whatever political innocence still existed in city government is being lost. Buddy Dyer may make an outstanding Orlando mayor, but the former state senator and Democratic attorney general nominee didn't raise $620,423 for his election there last month because he promised to fill the most potholes. Lois Frankel, former legislative leader and Democratic candidate for governor, didn't raise $513,937 for the job of West Palm Beach mayor (city population: 86,194) because she vowed to fight slumlords in the North End Redevelopment area.

The state parties have decided to make cities their partisan playgrounds, and this is not a healthy trend. Republicans tried to field a slate of candidates this year for the city commission in Tallahassee, so Democrats responded, in part, by giving $30,822 to a 23-year-old Florida A&M University former student body president (he won his commission race). Democrats gave $100,000 to Frankel and $78,400 to Dyer.

"We didn't make the rules, they did," says Maddox. "It does concern me that partisan money and soft dollars have gotten funneled into local races. But what would concern me more is if only Republican partisan money and soft dollars were being funneled into local races."

Maddox has a point, and his party, unlike the Republicans, has endorsed limits on the use of unlimited "soft money" in state campaigns. He also says he would consider supporting a change in the law to require both parties to reveal the sources of their income prior to the election deadlines in cities in which they contribute. State Republican Party spokesman Towson Fraser declined to venture an opinion on such disclosure, and won't say how much his party spent this year. (Both parties must file reports by April 10.)

Maddox may feel buoyed by the recent victories of mayoral candidates who happen to be Democrats, but both parties may ultimately find they reach a point of diminishing return with voters. Most city elections turn on intensely local issues, and voters tend to be wary of outside influences. They are not likely to be impressed by state party chieftains who try to tell them, through six-figure party donations, how to vote. More to the point, this path toward overt partisan combat in city elections is not likely to make those governments more responsive to their voters.

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