The Uses of Independent Power
by Jacqueline Salit

Nov. 15, 2018

Independent voters came out in force, grabbed the system by the lapels and gave it a good shake. Independents comprised 30% of the electorate, up from 28% in 2014.  In all, almost 34 million non-aligned voters cast ballots.  The increase in the number of independents who voted as compared with the last midterms was 38%, whereas Democrat/Republican voting rose by 25%.  While the parties were dedicating themselves to “bringing out their base,” independents chose to be a major part of the equation in 2018.

Suffice it to say that independents are swinging between cycles of disruption and cycles of stabilization, all the while searching for systemic changes that will take us to new ground.  Independent rather than partisan ground. That’s the essence of the post-election story, which actually began in late October, two weeks before Election Day.

What did these unpredictable independents do?  They broke for Democratic candidates by 12 points.  In the last midterms they broke for Republicans by 12 points.  In other words, there was a 24-point swing over four years’ time.  The voters who elected Barack Obama in 2008, then took away the Democrat Congressional majority in 2010, backed the GOP and then Trump through 2016, changed the make-up of the federal government yet again.  They also put a number of governorships in the blue column.

The impact?  A check on the White House and a two-party balance on Capitol Hill for the first time in 8 years.  But there’s more.  There was a sweep for key political reform initiatives in six states including nonpartisan redistricting in Michigan, Colorado and Missouri with votes of between 61% and 71%. Restoring felon voting rights won in Florida with 64%.  Remarkably, the typical drop off in totals from top of the ticket voting to initiative and referendum voting did not occur.  In Michigan, 96% of those who voted for Governor also voted on Proposition 2.  In Colorado, 98% voted at the top and in the reform contests.

In Florida, where the results are still being counted for Governor and Senator at the time of this writing, votes on the felon rights question totaled less than 5,000 fewer, and the results were decisive.

Though none of the official exit polling probed the voter makeup for the reform proposals, the turnout by independents combined with an across-the-board clamor for systemic change drove these victories. The percentages of “yes” votes rival those of the term limits movement of the 1990’s, which swept every state that allowed statewide initiatives by totals as high as 77%.

For now, independent voters can be pleased with the results.  Not because we want to be Democrats, but because overall we felt more aligned with sending their candidates to congress.  Many independents had the additional intent of defeating one-party rule and containing President Trump.

Independent candidates, meanwhile, had a tougher cycle.  While Angus King and Bernie Sanders—self-identified independent Senators from Maine and Vermont respectively who caucus with the Democrats—were re-elected, the new wave of independent candidates were shut out.  Statewide independent candidates in Connecticut, Kansas, Maine, Georgia, and New Mexico had significant and highly qualified independent candidates, but they did not win, instead polling between 2% and 15% of the vote.

The new wave statewide independent candidate who came closest to getting elected was Steve Poizner, running for Insurance Commissioner in California, who came within two percentage points.  It is worth noting that California is a nonpartisan top two system state (the reform propelled by Schwarzenegger, the Independent Voter Project, Independent Voice and a coalition of reform forces) with a system that eliminates the so-called “spoiler” factor, which Democrats played this year for all it was worth.  In New York, two worthy tickets won ballot status for new parties, the Serve America Movement (SAM) and the Libertarian Party.

In many respects, the election produced the standard outcome of midterms where the party in the White House loses control of one or both houses.  If there was a wave, it was neither blue nor red.  Nor was it purple, the color sometimes used to denote independents, as if we are a blend of the existing parties or ideologies, rather than something altogether different.  It might have been an independent or reform wave, in which voters of many persuasions used the tools they currently have available to chart a different course, even as they took steps to create some new ones.

Naturally, the Democrats and Republicans are now analyzing and evaluating their outcomes, their strategies and their prospects for 2020, with prospective candidates jockeying for position.  Very little energy will be given by anyone to governing in a productive way.  The independents, while neither a party nor a unified force, have produced a range of leaders and power centers in our “becoming” movement.  These leaders, activists and organizers need to be talking with one another now, honestly looking at what strategies worked and what didn’t, exploring how to strengthen and develop our movement and how best to use the ample power independents demonstrated in this election.

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First published by IVN
April 11, 2018

 

I lost a friend last week, Bonnie Reiss. She died of lung cancer at 62. The disease spread quietly until it emerged full force a year ago. Its grip was relentless. And it would not let go.

Bonnie was a political woman, with a long resume of remarkable accomplishments. Most recently, she’d architected and led a new policy institute at the University of Southern California, named for its benefactor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the swashbuckling movie star and former governor of California.

Bonnie served in Arnold’s government as Secretary of Education and was an inner circle advisor for this independent leader who, while elected as a Republican, never towed a party line. For this, Bonnie was well suited, as she didn’t care much for the partisan culture. She’d seen it all. She knew how destructive it could be.

Bonnie had a rare talent for handling swashbuckling independent men, particularly iconic and famous ones. Arnold’s larger-than-life personality and style fit easily into her world, having cut her political teeth as a young lawyer working for Ted Kennedy, which led to a lifelong collaboration and friendship with members of the Kennedy family.

She was tough and savvy, she’d made her bones in the testosterone-filled world of government and politics. I’m sure she paid a price for that toughness, but she had an outrageous sense of humor and a deep compassion for people.

As I came to know Bonnie over the last six years, I could see the many ways that Arnold relied on her to hone the mission of the Schwarzenegger Institute — an eclectic and transpartisan blend of process and policy issues ranging from alternative energy to alternative political systems.

She shaped a unique agenda for these postmodern political times. This was not altogether easy, particularly when it had to fit into the filming schedules of a variety of Terminator sequels and prequels.

In my own way, I had come to rely on Bonnie, too. As an early architect of the independent political movement, I’d been in many go-against-the-grain situations, and saw that Bonnie had a genuine feel for political disruption, particularly the kind that crossed ideological lines.

We’d first met at the founding conference of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy in 2012, when she’d graciously given me a VIP seat to witness the event.

Because political reform was one of the Institute’s five interest areas and because Independent Voting, through its California chapter, Independent Voice, had been a force in the Schwarzenegger coalition that backed and ultimately enacted a Top Two nonpartisan primary system, I landed on the invitation list.

I was glad that Arnold was investing his hard-won political capital in promoting reforms like open primaries, but hadn’t expected to find that there was a figure in his celebrated vortex like Bonnie. I knew right away that she was a singular character.

Over the next six years, we created a chain of bi-coastal collaboration. I was a guest speaker at several Schwarzenegger Institute events. I brought Bonnie and her team into the chaotic world of the independent movement and the burgeoning political reform universe.

Together, with the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University, we created a trilateral consortium to study and promote the rise of the independent voter. We met periodically over lunch at USC to scheme out overlapping strategies.

Once, when I was feeling despondent and angry about how universally male and macho the political scene was, I called her. She invited me to lunch at the swanky Hotel Bel-Air, where she was holed up for several days meeting with the heads of alternative energy companies (a prong of Arnold’s agenda).

I arrived 15 minutes early and was seated at a banquette near a half-dozen bejeweled Iranian beauties. Vintage Beverly Hills.

Suddenly, a commotion at the doorway drew everyone’s attention. Bonnie had arrived with Boo, her omnipresent terrier, in tow. She waved gaily and presented herself at our table, seating Boo in a chair with his head perched gamely over a plate, as if he were about to order a cobb salad and a glass of Prosecco.

We got down to business and I glumly told her “the tale of the tape,” a catalogue of arrogant male behavior in which collaboration was a commodity traded over a beer or a steak, and “little ladies” (I was in John Wayne mode) were grudgingly tolerated. The marginalizing of independent voters combined with the male elitism creeping into the movement was a toxic brew.

Bonnie and I were nearly the same age, with long but quite different career paths. She was the insider, I was the outsider. But, I knew she would understand the dynamics of being a woman in that mix. She listened sympathetically, told me not to worry about it, and instructed me to keep going on the path I was on.

“This independent voter thing is big,” I remember her saying. “Nobody gets it the way you do. One day they will all have to come to you.”

That was Bonnie. No victim talk. No wasted words. Always looking ahead. Always leading.

When it was time for dessert, Bonnie’s team joined us for coffee. Conyers Davis and Mebus Behrle, two of the most capable and caring political people you’ll ever come across, sat down with us. It was the first time the four of us had hung out together, and we chitchatted about the upcoming Senate race in California (happy talk) and the looming presidential contest (unhappy talk).

I was struck at the time by how devoted to Bonnie both Conyers and Mebus were, and I loved them instantly for that. When I got ready to leave, Bonnie stood up, walked over to me and put her arms around me. We hugged and she whispered in my ear, “my sister.” That was all I needed to hear.

A year later, I presented Bonnie with an Anti-Corruption Award at the annual awards ceremony of the Independence Clubs of New York City. She was already sick by then and couldn’t make the trip.

Instead, she sent a video recording thanking Cathy Stewart, the Coordinator of the Clubs, and me for the award.  We played it at the event and there she was, in her garden at home in Malibu, looking fervently alive and excited about all the plans we’d made to pry open the calcified political system.

The audience cheered.

What an indescribable loss. And, I must say thank you, Bonnie, for your friendship, your spirit, and your wisdom. I can never repay the debt. I will always remember you. Goodbye, my sister.

Post Script:  USC Schwarzenegger Institute Tribute to Bonnie Reiss here.

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Published by the Independent Voter Network (IVN) – April 5, 2017

Five years ago, outside of the public eye, a conflict flared inside the inner circle of Democratic Party power.

Simply put, it was this: should the Obama re-election campaign find a way to make an explicit appeal to independent voters? Five years ago, the answer was no. I know this because I was part of the discussion, though an outsider to it, whose counsel was firmly rejected. And though Obama won reelection in 2012 while losing independents to the GOP, the strategic decision to double down with the Democratic base and turn away from independents, the emergent engine for reform of the political system, laid the groundwork for Democratic defeat in 2016.

Last week, Bernie Sanders, the curmudgeonly crusader of the American left, called out his party’s failure to make those links: “Let me just say this, the Democrats will not succeed unless it attracts many, many millions of independents. The number of people who are now moving in the independent direction, as opposed to Republican and Democrat — it is growing. So if the Democrats are going to be successful, in fact that party is going to have to appeal to a whole lot of independents.”

Yes! But what does that mean, circa 2017, with the Democrats in opposition party mode trying to find a voice in a chaotic and uncertain Washington with a volatile and unpredictable Trump in the White House?

When I saw Bernie on MSNBC’s Morning Joe issuing this challenge, I called Charlotte Scot, an avid Bernie supporter in Connecticut and formerly the director of communications for the Democratic National Committee when Jimmy Carter was president. Charlotte had just appeared on stage with me at the National Conference of Independents, sharing her experience of how the power and energy of the Bernie movement had been dissipated by the party regulars. Charlotte became an independent and the audience cheered her decision.

She had seen Bernie on Morning Joe too and had already been tweeting about it. I asked her how she thought this fit in to the DNC’s latest efforts to restyle itself under Tom Perez’s leadership. “I don’t buy it”, she said. “The DNC does not want to change. It is already soliciting contributions from lobbyists, it may have asked all staff to resign but, it also just hired many former members of Clinton’s staff.  They are putting on a public show. Keith Ellison is now a deputy Director, but the party regulars appear to be running the show. These are the same people who let Donald Trump become president by favoring fundraising over hog raising farmers. By shunning every day Americans in favor of Hollywood elite. Bernie understood the people who were hurting but, how could the DNC ever support a candidate who doesn’t even own a tuxedo? Bernie is an outsider. He needs to run for president as an independent!”

We talked for a while and I told her the sad story of the Obama campaign in 2012, how I’d met with David Axelrod and David Simas to offer them the opportunity to rebuild Obama’s 2008 independent coalition, the one that had been squandered once he was elected, and the Pelosi Democrats started to set the agenda. This would require, I told them at the time, giving legitimacy to the fact that 42% of the country were not aligned with a party and demonstrating that the president understood why and respected our choice.

For a time, Axelrod and Simas engaged, asking for help on how to link reforms like including independent appointees on the FEC to social issues, like housing and jobs. But ultimately, they explained, the party stakeholders would not agree to terms, and so this course was abandoned.

Charlotte, a veteran of the Carter campaign and the Carter White House, remarked “Jimmy was an outsider and the party didn’t like that. One DNC member quipped, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies come to Washington.” Had the Democratic Party supported President Carter we would have had clean green energy 40 years ago. After the 2016 Democratic fiasco the independent movement is even more vital.”

True that, I told Charlotte. We are the coalition of outsiders. And maybe, just maybe, Bernie is coming to see that he needs to support the outsiders in order to pursue his own goal of remaking the Democratic Party. Whether he can get the Democratic leadership to go along is another question.

Looking toward the 2020 presidential election, independent voters – now 44% of the country- have three main concerns. Can the players in independent politics find a way to come together to create a unified strategy, including a unified independent presidential candidacy?  Can the independent movement force the Democratic and Republican Parties to guarantee voting rights to the nonaligned in the 2020 primaries and caucuses?

Obama won the nomination in 2008 because enough state primaries allowed independents to vote to power his win over Hillary Clinton. Bernie, likewise, had huge appeal to independents and was forced late in the primary season to speak out for open primaries, though by then it was too late for a path to the nomination.

Third, can the movement propel reforms of the political process sufficient to transfer political power from the parties to the people?

Bernie, great to see you speaking out for a coalition of outsiders! Let’s sit down together and talk about how to bring our movements together. The tide is turning toward political independence. We felt the Bern. Now, let’s make the turn.