David Schwartzman: From Democrat to ‘independent’ — the opportunism of the switch

Suppose you’re a registered DC Democrat active in the party with political ambition and you want to become an at-large member of the DC Council. Knowing there are two at-large seats up for election, which do you choose: the one to be determined, in essence, via the Democratic Party’s primary, or the other, reserved for a candidate who is not a registered Democrat? Most choose the latter when it means they don’t have to challenge an incumbent running for reelection — in this case, Robert White. It’s easy to switch registration to “independent.”

So far, the DC Board of Elections lists White and three others — Tyrone E. Carmichel, Tori Fernandez Whitney and Keith A. Silver — as the only candidates to have picked up nominating petitions to run in the Democratic primary for an at-large council seat. And as of Monday, Whitney and Silver have now withdrawn from the race, according to the Board of Elections.

Meanwhile, the following Democrats have given notice of their intention to seek the non-Democratic Party seat in November by making this switch, as noted in a Washington Informer article last month and other media reports:

1. Christina Henderson, legislative assistant to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and a former staff member for DC Council member David Grosso (who made the same switch when he first ran for at-large in 2012);
2. Markus Batchelor, vice president of the State Board of Education and former president of Ward 8 Democrats;
3. Franklin Garcia, elected as the District’s shadow representative as a Democrat (although he recently told me he hadn’t yet decided whether to instead seek the nomination of either the Democratic or Statehood Green Party in the June primary);
4. Eric Rogers, who managed DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s 2018 reelection campaign;
5. Marcus Goodwin, president of DC Young Democrats (until his recent resignation) and an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for an at-large seat in 2018; and 
6. Mario Cristaldo, at-large committeeman on the DC Democratic State Committee, elected in 2018, and chair of Democratic at-large Council member Anita Bonds’ Citizens Outreach Fund since its creation in 2013.

According to the Washington Informer article, one other candidate running as an independent — Chander Jayaraman, chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B — objects to this opportunistic switch of his prospective opponents. “I am the only true independent in the race,” he told the Informer.

In the past, the DC Republican Party has unsuccessfully challenged the right of independents to run for the council’s at-large position. The wording of the District’s governing documents clearly allows the practice, however. 

The relevant provision in the Home Rule Charter states: “In the case of the first election held for the office of member of the Council after the effective date of this title [January 2, 1975], not more than two of the at-large members (excluding the Chairman) shall be nominated by the same political party. Thereafter, a political party may nominate a number of candidates for the office of at-large member of the Council equal to one less than the total number of at-large members (excluding the Chairman) to be elected in such election.”

Independents are not members of political parties, so it is clear that they are eligible to run for an at-large position.

But the real issue to consider is whether the “switch” and continued one-party rule by the Democratic Party is enhancing or detracting from the democratic process and the quality of our residents’ lives. One obvious detraction was the almost-immediate repeal of the voter-approved Initiative 77 regarding the minimum wage for tipped workers; Grosso, one of the two independents on the DC Council, supported repeal.

In the District, we do not have proportional representation or ranked-choice voting, which would promote political diversity and better reflect the views of our electorate. So what has this one-party rule resulted in — or at the very least tolerated? The District’s big racial and economic disparities stand out; affordable housing, for example, is disappearing for the majority of DC residents. Ed Lazere, executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, wrote a piece last year titled “DC’s Growing Prosperity Is Not Reaching Black Residents, Census Data Show.” Virtually the only housing still affordable for low-income residents is public housing, but current policies continue to erode this stock. Compared to the 50 states, DC has the highest income inequality in the nation. Income inequality is the driver of bad outcomes for all our residents, as it is for communities around the world. DC also has a big racial gap in wealth, with the median white household having 81 times the wealth of the median Black household. DC’s child poverty rate of 23.1% in 2018 was higher than the poverty rates of all but six states, according to a Children’s Defense Fund fact sheet. In 2016 DC’s per capita rate of homelessness was the highest of any U.S. city. Black males in DC have a life expectancy nearly 15 years shorter than white males; for Black females, it is nine years less than for white females, as documented by the DC Human Rights City Alliance. 

Despite these racial and economic disparities, the DC Council and mayor have long ignored DC’s very sizable tax base as a potential revenue source, pandering to the big corporate/developer sector and wealthy residents who give campaign contributions. In 2017, the taxable income of individual tax returns of those making $1 million or more in adjusted gross income was $5.5 billion; now it is likely close to $7 billion. Yet these residents pay the government a lower fraction of their income (9.5%) than does our working/middle class (10%). And once again this year, wealthy residents will be getting a multimillion-dollar tax cut on their federal income tax because of the Trump/GOP legislation signed into law at the end of 2017. As I’ve written before, the DC Council should hike the District’s income tax rates to recover a good part of this federal tax cut.

So should the non-Democratic seat provision for at-large council be eliminated, as some Democrats and The Washington Post editorial board have argued? Rob Richie, president and CEO of the national nonprofit FairVote, told WAMU he doesn’t think so, although he’s not a big fan of the approach. “It’s not the best way to do it,” he said of the Home Rule Charter’s set-aside provision, “but it’s better than not doing it. I believe you make better decisions after hearing more voices.”

Perhaps hearing more voices would lead to discussion and adoption of creative approaches to the shortage of affordable housing and the growing racial and economic disparities I outlined earlier.

As discussed in WAMU’s November 2018 article, Richie suggests “moving away from the winner-take-all system that predominates in the U.S.” and finding other models in places such as Europe. “They all use some non-winner-take-all system that more reliably and more fairly does what DC does. That sense of representing more people and having a legislature that reflects majority and minority opinions is the norm. We’re the real outlier.”

Last October, Council member Grosso introduced the Ranked Choice Voting Act of 2019, with support from fellow independent Elissa Silverman and Democrats Brianne Nadeau, Mary Cheh and Charles Allen. A coalition led by DC for Democracy is now working to get a hearing for the measure and hopefully passage this spring. My own DC Statehood Green Party has joined this coalition, prioritizing this goal. But passing ranked-choice voting would come too late for the 2020 election, as would another possible remedy: legislation requiring that prospective candidates make the switch to independent at least one year before the primary election. This would cut down on political calculations.

The first use of public financing is now underway for the 2020 election, which will help erode but not eliminate the influence of the big-money contributions in our local elections. But nonetheless I must give a heads-up to DC voters: Beware of the opportunistic switch of candidates from Democrat to independent!

David Schwartzman represents the DC Statehood Green Party on the Fair Budget Coalition and the DC Climate Coalition. He was the DC Statehood Green Party candidate for an at-large DC Council seat in the November 2018 election. Schwartzman is the co-author of The Earth Is Not for Sale.

This post has been updated to note the withdrawal of Tori Fernandez Whitney and Keith A. Silver from the Democratic primary for one of the at-large DC Council seats up for election this year.

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