Some Thoughts about Louisville’s Mayoral Primary Race from an Independent

There’s been a lot of gnashing of teeth since the primary election results of May 19^th rolled in. How could we end up with two Democrats in November and no Republicans? To compound matters, one of those Democrats is the much disliked current mayor, Craig Greenberg, the bane of nearly every Jefferson county resident; viewed by many to be one of the worse mayors since the city/county merger of 2003.

The other, lesser known, Democrat is Shameka Parrish-Wright, the current metro council represent for District 3,  which covers some of the city’s West End and much of Shively. First elected in 2023, she serves on the Budget, Planning and Zoning, and Public Safety committees as well as on the Commission for Persons with Disabilities.

As a community organizer for 25 years, Shameka is the executive director of VOCAL-KY, a social activist organization dedicated to ending AIDS, the failed drug war, overcrowding jails and homelessness.  She was the co-chair of Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression and was active with Black Lives Matter and the protest movement pertaining to Breonna Taylor.

 In addition, she has been involved with numerous other social justice groups such as The Coalition for the Homeless, Kentucky Reproductive Freedom PAC, the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, and other progressive causes. In short, all things many on the Far Right would consider “socialist” or “communist”. That leaves local Republicans and conservatives between a rock and a hard place with many looking for someone to blame.

Several have suggested Rep. Jason Nemes (R-Middletown), who proposed making the Mayoral and metro council races nonpartisan. He was a lead sponsor of HB 388 making Louisville, one of just six cities with partisan races out of the state’s 400 other cities. The idea was to bring Louisville more in line with the other cities and communities in the Commonwealth and in keeping with the growing trend nationally.

HB 388 was also based on recommendations made the bipartisan Louisville Metro Comprehensive Review Committee (which, by the way, excluded Independent and third party participation or input). Thus, no longer will the mayoral or metro council races reflect a candidate’s party affiliation. As a result, uninformed voters by and large, weren't sure who they’re voting for.

Just because no party loyalty label ("D" or "R") was shown on the ballot, the candidates were still very much partisan. In a true non-partisan election, candidates shouldn't be tied to any party, otherwise you end up with what we got---two Democrats running. Of course, it could have just as easily gone the other way with two Republicans facing off in November. 

In non-partisan elections, voters need to be educated to look at a candidate's position on issues and make their decision about who to vote for based on that. Given that most voters are generally conservative leaning (though not extreme), the moderate Right and moderate Left should do well while the extremists on both sides would likely be defeated. This would bring us back to where rationality and compromise are the order of the day.  

The second big issue was that most voters, despite their near constant kvetching about Mayor Greenberg, didn’t bother to vote. Of the 585,088 registered voters in Jefferson County, just 151,288 showed up at the polls. That works out to be a measly 25% of the vote. Where was the other ¾ of the county’s voters? As an aside, of Louisville’s 7,655 Independents and third party voters, 6,516 turned out to vote. That’s an 85% turnout.

Therefore, it looks like the fault (or blame if you prefer) rests with the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties for failing to get their people out to vote, and especially that of the local Republican party for not helping its voters to know who on the ballot was a Republican! An apparent failure in understanding non-partisan ballots.

I should also mention that it is my understanding that Republican metro council members, as well as other elected Republicans, decided to “stay home” as well. While technically the party doesn’t openly endorse during a primary, individuals, elected or not, most certainly can support a candidate of their choice. Afterall, since this was a “non-partisan” race, there would obviously be no bias or violation of bylaws since no one on the ballot was a “D” or “R” (or “I” if we were so allowed).  

I suppose if anyone is looking to fix blame on the mayoral election outcome, Republicans can look to their party leaders and to other elected Republicans for not supporting their own as well as failing to alert their partisan “congregation” just who was and wasn’t a member and working to get out the vote. From my perspective, this is a not just a failure of leadership, it’s a betrayal of Republicans and conservatives alike.

Finally, we need to look at our fellow voters. Three-fourths of those eligible to vote stay home,. Most of those were in the county while urban Louisville came out to vote in force---as it usually does. It makes me wonder just how much worse things are going to have to get in Louisville to get us off our collective butts and do something aside complain. To paraphrase President Teddy Roosevelt, “if all you want to do is complain and offer no solutions, then sit down and shut up. We need doers to change the system. Not whiners".

 

In Focus: State Rep. Jason Nemes discusses updates toKentucky Law that governs partisan and non-partisan races in Louisville

Commonwealth Secretary of State’s Election Results

It's Time For Real Change, But Can It Really Happen?

We need to accept that we're being played. All of us. We've become a nation of victims, alleged racists, and entitled brats. We must find ways to work together, preferably without the government's involvement as much as possible. This shouldn't be difficult since we have more in common than not, although the establishment media would have you believe otherwise.  A divided nation cannot stand for long.

Political offices which don't make laws or policy need to be non-partisan from the outset. Term limits need to be mandatory. Congress and the Presidency should be limited to 12 years. Four 3 year terms for the President; two 6 year terms for the Senate; and six 2 year terms for Representatives. In addition, all federal court positions, including the Supreme Court, should also be capped at 12 years. Citizens United has shown us just how out of touch the Supreme Court is.

We need to push for an end of partisanship. The election playing field should be level. Elections should be open to all individuals regardless of political affiliation. As it is now, Democrats and Republicans are only required to have three or five signatures to get on the ballot. Meanwhile, Independents (the nation's largest political bloc) have to have hundreds of signatures. Same goes for third parties.

Whatever goes for the Democrats and Republicans should go for anyone else running for office. Debates are largely closed to anyone not a Democrat or Republican (particularly at the national level, thanks to the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan effort to rig the debates and keep out third parties and Independents). That needs to go. We need to hear from all candidates, not just a chosen two.

There needs to be total campaign finance reform, which includes eliminating the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United mistake. Corporations are not "people".  They are legal fictions. They are not entitled to the same (or greater) rights as you and me. They do not speak for their employees, customers, or shareholders (who each speak for themselves with their own vote and actions).

The Supreme Court declared in their decision that money was equivalent to free speech, except corporations had more "free speech" than you and I because there was no cap on what they could spin. Thus  their "free speech" was more valuable than that of ordinary citizens. 

Citizens United all but removed citizens from the election process by making it so expensive that common voters can't either compete with corporate donations or afford to run for office. No wonder Congress is referred to as a "millionaire's club", and the cost to run for a state and local office isn't that far off (the same can be said of the Presidency and Judicial system by the way).

What the Supreme Court did through Citizens United was to create a de facto "political class" of wealthy elites, leaving us as the "debt serfs" instead of the "Citizen Representatives" our Founding Fathers intended.

Term limits reduce lessens corporate influence. It also greatly increases the flow of new ideas and creates a closer connection between the voters and the elected. Term limits also reduce the possibilities of corruption. Rank Choice Voting is something we need to seriously consider.  It allows us to rank candidates without reference to a party. Where Rank Choice Voting has been tried, it's been shown to work. The highest ranked candidate wins. It doesn't get any more fair than that.

The public should control the purse strings. If we've learned anything about politics , it's that politicians can't be trusted with money, especially ours! Any proposed increase in taxes, fees, rates, or salaries of public officials, should be placed on the ballot and voted on by the public. It's our money and it should be our decision.

By the same token, citizens should be allowed to put referendums on the ballot. In 26 states plus Washington D.C., that's already a reality. However, in others states (like Kentucky), legislators fear it like the plague. The last thing they want is citizens putting their own issues on the ballot and bypassing them with a direct vote. Why?  I'll tell you what I was told.

As one senior Kentucky "Blue Dog" Democrat state senator once told me, "voters aren't smart enough to know what they what", which I strongly disagree with. I think we know exactly what we want, and I think that given balanced and accurate information on an issue, voters make pretty good decisions. The fear of professional politicians is being bypassed and losing their power and influence.

By the way, that "Blue Dog" Democrat also happened to be drawing two  pensions, one private and one public (we call that "double dipping"). He also sat on two Election and Constitutional Amendment committees as well as host of financial committees.  Think he had a vested interest in opposing voter referendums?

Any referendum would have put on a ballot, be it local or statewide, would be the result of a petition signed by registered voters after first being reviewed by either the County/City attorney general or the State Attorney General to ensure its legality and is properly worded to avoid any ambiguities or misunderstandings. The appropriate attorney general would also provide a public notice of the issue to be voted on that is free from partisan wording and is in easy to understand language.

If Citizens United can be viewed as "free speech" for corporations and the wealthy, then term limits, citizen ballot initiatives, and voter control of the purse strings are too! By the same token, prohibiting these things can and should be considered stifling the public's free speech.

As soon as a winning candidate is elected to office and immediately before being sworn in, should publically resign from their political party and announce their intention to represent all the citizens of their district.

In our "winner-take-all" political system and thanks to gerrymandering and in the absence of term limits, the winning party controls that seat for the next two, four, or six years (depending on the office). Only legislation which supports their particular point of view is supported.

Meanwhile, those who's candidate or party lost receive nothing or close to it in terms of representation. If you're a Democrat and the Republican wins, you're out of luck when it comes to being represented. Your interests are rarely if ever, considered.  In a "winner-take-all" political system, the losing side is literally without a political voice. Talk about taxation without representation!

Of course, we have to take a deeper look here. Both main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, don't actually represent common voters on the Left, Right, or Middle. They represent the interests of corporate cliques financing either side of the political divide. One might even say that they are above the artificial political divide whose sole aim is to keep us on opposing sides. The last thing they want is us united.

 It's about power to control wealth and wealth to control of power. Their lobbyists quite literally write the legislation which they then shepherd through the various committees with each adding earmarks or "pork" as the price of their signature (as an aside, Congress voted to make "pork" illegal in 2011, although it routinely ignores its own law).

Ultimately if enough (and the right) palms are greased, the bill, written for their benefit, becomes law. Your interests doesn't actually come into play. If it does by pure happenstance, it's immediately heralded as a "victory for the people". Yeah, right.

Nevertheless, hopefully your interests coincide enough with one side or the other to warrant your vote. At least that's what their campaign marketing tries to convince you of anyway. But it doesn't change the fact that the interests of the losing side aren't even seriously considered post election. But, most Americans, over 43% of them, have said "no" to both parties and switched to Independent while others have decided to join a third party.

Personally, I think politicians should renounce their political affiliation and take an oath that they will represent the best interest of all the voters in their district as I stated earlier. Until political parties (defacto extensions of special interest cliques) are eliminated, that's the best and only prospect of all the voters having a voice.

If we want change; really want it, we will have to make it happen. We are the only ones who can. Those in power have historically never willingly surrendered it. They've fought to keep it. They've imposed it. They've camouflaged it. They've traded one hand for the other, but they've never willingly given it up.

Most of us have been convinced by the establishment media that there is nothing we can do, so we sit back and do nothing. Bread and circuses. The truth is that we can do something---term limits, Rank Choice Voting, end gerrymandering, end Citizens United, enact referendums and voter initiatives, equal ballot access, and ending "winner-take-all" elections to name just a few.

We ultimately have the real power through our willingness to express our voice and our vote. We had it all along, but many of us have been intimidated into silence. Our Founding Fathers were too, by the greatest and most powerful empire on the planet, but they found their voice and courage. Now, so can you.

 

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States with initiative or referendum

Blog: A Permanent Ban on Pork Barrel Spending

 

U.S. Term Limits

 

To End Gerrymandering, Change How We Elect Congress

End Gerrymandering

FairVote: Rank Choice Voting

Rank Choice Voting

 

End Citizens United

Understanding the Referendum Process