It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to serve on the Provo City Council for the past eight years. Along with 15 different council members over that time, a mix of liberals, conservatives, independents and moderates, and in cooperation with Mayor Kaufusi, we have conducted our business free of the partisan fever and incivility that have infected other parts of the state and the nation. The Utah County GOP threatens that record with its plan to circumvent our non-partisan elections by endorsing candidates.
When I first ran for city council in 2017, three sitting council members publicly opposed my candidacy without knowing me. They had heard I was a liberal. Sometime after I was elected, however, we were working smoothly together, and four years later, I had their public support for a second run. I don’t believe this is because I became more conservative (although I am now unaffiliated), but because we used our differences to solve practical problems together. Our different perspectives didn’t threaten but rather improved our chances of crafting good policy. Governing in an echo chamber of political homogeneity is the death of political creativity. Besides, character and judgment have proven far more important than party affiliation.
All municipal candidates in Provo this year have had to decide if they would pursue the GOP endorsement. One candidate, Adam Shin, reported that his interview consisted of some rather strange questions. He told of comments that ranged from “You look young. How long have you actually lived here?” to “Did you vote for Trump or not? How will you keep my property values going up? You won’t put in bike lanes near the school, right? I hate when they change things.” He decided not to pursue the endorsement.
Another candidate, Jeff Whitlock, began the process but decided against it in the end, despite being a former president of the College Republicans at BYU and despite extensive engagement with the party locally and nationally. He wisely wrote, “For the last decade, I’ve bemoaned the increasing partisan polarization of almost every aspect of our lives. I’ve seen it make us angrier, more divided, and less capable of solving the very real problems facing our society. I just couldn’t be complicit in furthering this sad, dangerous trend.”
When knocking doors in Provo, it is not uncommon for a candidate to be asked who they voted for for president before they can say anything about their character or plans for Provo.
Candidates for GOP endorsement are expected to sign off on over 50 party positions or explain why they oppose any part of the platform. They must also acknowledge that if they publicly support any candidates for office that are not Republican, they will not be eligible to run for office as a Republican. It is not clear in the end what the criteria are for endorsement nor why they matter.
None other than George Washington famously warned against the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” Former Republican Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake recently bemoaned the political costs of the fanatical “allegiance to a single man” that has strangled the GOP. Democrats, he also rightly insists, should learn to tolerate more difference of opinion on core platform policies if they will have any hope of being effective.
As a Latter-day Saint, I subscribe to President Dallin H. Oaks’ understanding that effective civic engagement “may require changing party support or candidate choices, even from election to election. Such independent actions will sometimes require voters to support candidates or political parties or platforms whose other positions they cannot approve. That is one reason we encourage our members to refrain from judging one another in political matters. We should never assert that a faithful Latter-day Saint cannot belong to a particular party or vote for a particular candidate.”
This is only possible, of course, when politicians and candidates, like those I have just cited, show the courage to act independently and when citizens reward them by voting for such independence.
It is especially sad that addiction to party overrides the considerable trust and community spirit we otherwise enjoy in Provo. I don’t believe any comparable city in America enjoys as much familiarity as we do, and yet too many of us choose instead to see each other through toxic partisan lenses. Until we start taking responsibility for our own politics and seek practical solutions to our own problems, we will just be playing someone else’s game. And we will be the losers, even when our side wins.