Solutions to Local Problems are Non-Partisan
The two major American political parties love to frame issues as binary. This or that. Black or white. Up or down. Democrat or Republican. With us or against us. If you support that, we hate you. If you don’t support that, you don’t care about people and must be canceled.
Framing issues this way helps their bottom line. They hope we won’t see the grey in between and work together for actual solutions. The angrier and more emotional people become about an issue, the more money goes into their coffers. The longer these emotionally charged battles wage on, the more money the parties raise. When a problem is solved, however, it can no longer be used as a campaign issue.
When a partisan politician wins an election, instead of advocating for the best interests of the community, that person has to toe the party line if he wants party support in future elections. In LA County, this means not speaking up against powerful county supervisors on public health decisions.
The beauty of local races like city council and school board is that they are non-partisan (at least, they’re supposed to be). This means candidates’ party affiliations are not published alongside candidate names.
The political parties can and do still choose their favorite candidates and pump money into local races to support those loyal to party ideology. It is happening in the PVPUSD school board race. However, national political ideology does not serve the needs of constituents in these local races. City councils are mainly responsible for keeping the lights on at city hall, funding vital public services like police and fire, and dealing with zoning and municipal code matters. A candidate’s stance on gun rights, abortion, and woke ideology is irrelevant to those vital services. Getting caught up in culture wars and dedicating resources to discussing national political ideology can only hurt, not help, the state of the local government.
Similarly, school boards are responsible for providing policy direction to ensure the needs of students are being met. They guide the district’s budget and establish spending priorities. Their critical mission is to educate the community’s young people.
Moving the focus away from basic literacy in subjects like math, English, science, and onto national ideological debates that play out on Fox News and CNN can only harm students. I’m not saying young people should not be engaged in politics – they absolutely should, and civics education is critical. My point is that local elected officials should be focused on nonpartisan issues critical to the core mission of their public agency, and should not be derailed by divisive hot button political topics.
By casting aside ideological debates and focusing on serving the community, local elected officials can do their best work. We don’t need to recreate the dysfunctional gridlock in DC in our own backyard. It serves no one. We need leaders who govern by evidence and not ideology.
