Downticket

As the election draws nearer, casual conversation turns to the Great Race. People ask me who I’m going to vote for president in the same manner as asking who I’ll root for in the World Series. They are usually a little baffled when I answer that I’m rooting for a minor league team. Maybe it is a little churlish of me, but I enjoy bursting their bubble. We focus too much attention on our elected monarch, ignoring that there are other offices in the government that need to be filled.
While my interlocutors are trying to figure out what to say about Libertarians, I pivot, asking them who they’ll support for Governor. How about Representative? Oh, and Attorney General? Superintendent of Public Instruction? County Commissioner? They usually stop me well before I reach judges and public questions, claiming that they still need to research all of this other stuff before election day. I doubt they will, but if they try, it’s a hard thing to do.
Most local elections receive scant attention from the media, certainly far, far less than the presidential race. My local paper will inform me of the candidates’ marital status, what church they attend, and other trivia, along with three positions they provided on some local issues (in my county, usually identical among the candidates, regardless of party). This is precious little information upon which to install someone in office. One year, I tried calling up or emailing candidates for city council directly; unsurprisingly, they all told me what I wanted to hear. Judges are even more inscrutable. Why not give up?
With power concentrating ever more in the Federal City, and from thence further into the EOP, it’s easy to ignore local and state elections. This is misleading, because local politicians still have a large impact on your life, often to a greater extent than the buffoons in Washington. Local governance decides what kind of a community you will live in, which businesses will locate there, what kind of jobs will be available, how you will get around, what kind of house you will live in, what you can do with that house, what kind of schools your children will attend, how crime will be combated and prosecuted, et cetera. The policies at the town hall, the county courthouse, and the Statehouse directly affect the environment you deal with on a day-to-day basis. And if you don’t watch them, they can get away with murder.
Americans are romantic about local government, preferring to think of corruption as a phenomenon of the Third World, the Old World, Big Cities, or the occasional Congressman. On the contrary, one can find crookedness and incompetence at all levels of government and in any community. Prosecutorial misconduct and eminent domain abuse are two examples that were brought to the attention of the public because they befell white people with the means to fight back. The ACLU and the Institute for Justice regularly discover new outrages imposed by local government on their citizens. And these don’t even begin to cover all the petty bribery, kickbacks, patronage, and nepotism that pervade local governments. The grandest conspiracy theories about our Presidential aspirants can’t hold a candle to the intricate web of back-scratching that goes on among local politicians and businessmen.
Voting may not be the only way to influence local governance, but the casual disregard the median voter has for downticket choices is an invitation for bad government and mischief (even more than the aggrandizement of the Imperial Presidency). It might make me a scold and a bore, but I believe it is right to press people on what they intend to do in the voting booth.