Make political parties pay for their primaries
Del. Mark Cole and I agree on very few policy and social issues, but a bill he introduced for the General Assembly session that starts this week is one of them. Most Virginians should love it, and most politicians will hate it.
The Republican from Fredericksburg wants political parties, not the public, to pay for primary elections. H.B. 36 would end partisan primary welfare.
“I don’t think it’s right for taxpayers to foot the bill for the party nomination process,” he explained when I spoke to him about the bill. “I’m not sure why Republican taxpayers should foot the bill for the Democratic primary and vice versa.”
Indeed. Why should Virginians subsidize political parties whose partisan antics in Washington 27672061 and to a lesser extent in Richmond 27672061 have created a dysfunctional environment that harms the nation and the commonwealth?
If polls are any indication, people are not big fans of either major party these days, but they are forced to help perpetuate them.
Political parties are private organizations; they are not part of the government and arguably provide no real public service. If candidates ran as independents, they might do a better job, free from the leash of party machines.
In this presidential primary year, the commonwealth and its localities will pay for a GOP primary on Super Tuesday. Four years ago, we financed primaries for both parties.
Taxpayers, whether they consider themselves Republicans, Democrats, third-party aficionados or independents, pay for private clubs’ nominating contests.
The parties are special in that regard. Taxpayers do not fund elections for homeowners associations and little league boards.
Nothing says political parties must hold primaries. They could choose nominees privately by convention or caucus. Maybe a monkey could pull a name out of a hat. That might improve the quality of candidates on the general election ballot.
Only when it gets to the general election should the public step up and pay. The winner then will take office. The winner of a primary merely gets a party label.
This year’s Republican primary will not even feature all of the Republican candidates.
Primaries are not cheap for local governments. Radford, for example, will spend about $5,000 running the upcoming GOP primary. When both parties have primaries, the cost to taxpayers is up to $7,500.
That might not sound like much, but that is just one smallish city with only three precincts. Montgomery County has two dozen precincts.
“It’s a lot for the taxpayers to pay for party business,” Radford Registrar Tracy Howard said. “The parties ought to pay for it or pick their candidates another way.”
Cole’s colleagues in Richmond, most of whom come from one of the major parties that benefit from this scheme, will not likely see things that way. After all, if the parties have to pay for primaries, they will have less money for attack ads.
I doubt they will all declare they have a conflict of interest.
The Roanoke Times | 981-1645
Trejbal is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
He is based in the New River Valley.
No related posts.
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Thanks for that bit of insight.
What part of the primary tab currently falls to taxpayers?
Do we pay for any advertising? I hope not.
Comment by Urman — January 20, 2012 @ 7:57 am
@Urman No, taxpayers do not pay for advertising, at least not candidate advertising. The cost here is just the actual nuts-and-bolts election stuff. That includes putting together the ballots, printing absentee ballots and sending them to people, renting polling places, paying election workers and so on. The only public advertising that might go on is reminding voters that an election is coming up and where to register to vote.
Comment by C. Trejbal — January 20, 2012 @ 11:24 am