In Wichita, Topeka, and elsewhere across Kansas, the municipal election cycle is underway. Candidates for city council and school board seats and mayor will be selected in the primary elections which will conclude on Tuesday, August 1. For those few Kansans involved in these races, whether as candidates or supporters or observers, here’s a primer on how they are (and aren’t) changing.
The most important basic electoral reality in local elections is the word I just used: “few.” Even as voter turnout has trended upwards nationwide, participation in municipal elections seems likely to remain very low. When mayoral candidates, who compete for city-wide pool of potential voters, are on the ballot, the primary elections may see only 10% of registered voters bothering to cast ballots; when you only have city council and school board members running in their distinct districts, overall turnout is almost always even less.
This means that candidates looking to advance to their respective general elections in November are trying to find ways to motivate a relatively tiny number of likely voters.
The decline in the social role that political parties once played has made this more difficult. Partisanship is, of course, widely condemned as interfering with the ability of elected representatives to compromise with one another — and looking at our national government, the evidence in support to that condemnation is plentiful.
But at the same time, parties are the greatest political tool yet invented for helping busy citizens, especially during times of social unrest and confusion, to identify with other voters, interest groups, and ultimately candidates who share and represent best their own considered opinions. As much as people dislike the political polarization in America, that same fierce attachment to one’s chosen political tribe is part of what has been getting more citizens to vote nationwide.
Municipal elections in Kansas are, by state law, non-partisan. However, this has never stopped party-aligned organizations from promoting their preferred candidates for city council or school board — lately, more and more explicitly. In recent election cycles in Kansas, we’ve seen country, state, and even national Republican party and affiliated socially conservative or libertarian groups support — through donations, but also through mailers, phone banks, and more — local candidates (different Democratic groups have done the same, but not nearly so often or as well).
But whether this will result in any increase in turnout remains to be seen. There may simply be a hard ceiling on how many people can be engaged by arguments over classroom curricula, land development, and other city and school issues (especially during the summer). If that is the case, the unapologetic partisanship in how some candidates fund and develop their campaigns — however much they may avoid partisan language in favor of emphasizing broad, presumably unifying generalities — may merely result in a fair amount of partisan cannibalization.
The better funded Republican and Democratic municipal candidates, even if they don’t personally campaign as such, may split voters, attracting some that might have voted differently, looking at questions of civic experience and competence rather than party allegiance. For some local candidates, who may be committed members of their parties but also operating on the increasingly-dated assumption that local races needn’t have any connection to ideologically-affiliated money, interests, or causes, the potential eclipse of their detail-oriented arguments by well-connected candidates is frustrating.
Still, politics is always changing, and candidates must adapt. Ultimately, I have respect for every candidate who wades into these murky waters. Late into the night on August 1, I’ll be watching.
