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The late speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill said that “all politics is local.” And to the degree it was ever true, it seems his statement has become progressively less true since it was uttered. All politics is becoming more nationalized, and we are worse for it.
It’s within that context that I was encouraged to see House Bill 1428—which would have provided local schools the option to make school board elections require party affiliation—appears to have died in this year’s legislative session.
The bill’s author, Rep. J.D. Prescott, R-Union City, has said his motivation is “all about transparency for the voters—give our voters as much information as possible before they cast their vote at the ballot box.”
To the extent that party affiliation would increase turnout by helping voters understand a candidate’s position, the bill is not without merit.
According to Kelly Devine of grantmaker Carnegie Corp., “Locally elected school board members compose the largest group of elected officials in the country and yet the National School Boards Association (NSBA) estimates that voter turnout is often just 5% or 10% for these elections.”
As a consequence of this low turnout, candidates with the support of teachers’ unions are 8% more likely to win, according to Manhattan Institute’s Michael Hartney. Lawmakers supporting party affiliation are likely hoping to break up this over-indexed board representation from entrenched union advocates, even if they’re not saying so.
Even with the benefits of transparency, the potential of more informed voters and the probability of increased turnout, this bill should stay dead and be buried because of the incentive structure it would form.
Reducing more things down to red and blue would accelerate the trend of polarization—something a growing number of Americans see as a major concern. According to polling firm FiveThirtyEight, three in 10 now see polarization as a top concern in our country.
Polarized races inherently attract the politically extreme and push away moderates. In Congress, this trend has led to an influx of legislators less interested in crafting policy and more interested in performing fan service on cable news and Twitter. If Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rashida Tlaib are the ideal mold for school board candidates, party affiliation would accelerate communities in that direction. I don’t think the majority of voters want that.
Further, with institutional confidence in public schools down to 28%, according to Gallup, it seems ill-advised to push their structure more toward that of Congress—which only 7% of the public has confidence in.
Beyond increased polarization, party affiliation would marshal increased resources to slated candidates expected to act on prescriptive party orthodoxy and crowd out many quality—likely moderate—candidates from pursuing the office.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans are moderates on politics. Now, again, I don’t mean chiefly in terms of their policy preferences; I mean chiefly in terms of what role they want politics to play in life,” recently retired Sen. Ben Sasse said to NPR in January.
With culture-war issues like critical race theory and gender identity already hot buttons in last fall’s school board elections across Indiana, party affiliation would accelerate the nationalization of the local boards, inevitably growing the role of politics in our lives.
Instead of bringing more zero-sum politics to school board rooms, voters should expect school boards to set an example for the students they serve.•
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Schutt is co-founder of Homesense Heating & Cooling and Refinery46 and an American Enterprise Institute civic renewal fellow. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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