One of the least widely known facts of government throughout the world is the tension between elected and appointed officials and the party leaders of their own parties. This tension comes down to the questions of: Who is in charge? Who controls whom? Who is responsible for what? Who can can get rid of whom?
The answers to these questions are never settled for all time, and are always in play. Generally they are muted because party officials and elected officials try to make the necessary mutual accomodations to get along with each other. They recognize that different roles inherently create different perspectives and they realize that they have more to gain by cooperating with each other than fighting each other.
And then there are hard issues and difficult personalities, a perfect storm which creates conflicts that must be resolved. Such a situation exists in Connecticut, where a tone-deaf Joe Lieberman did such an effective job appealing to Republicans that he convinced many Democrats HE WAS REALLY A REPUBLICAN and famously lost the Democratic primary to blogosphere favorite Ned Lamont.
Many people hoped and expected that Lieberman would be humiliated and banished to the world of Fox television which he so enjoyed. However, Lieberman re-discovered what many public officials have discovered: in a conflict between party and government, government usually wins in the short run. The party actions seem erroneous and inexplicable to those who not identify with the party.
Examples of public officials who have fought their party organizations and triumphed include Philadelphia Mayors James H. J. Tate and Frank Rizzo; New York Mayors Robert Wagner, John Lindsay,and Ed Koch; Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia, and various others. This is a list of people that party organizations tried unsuccessfully to remove from power, and it does not include the far larger group of people who gained power over the objections of party organizations.
The triumphs of the elected officials were short-lived, as they paid a price for party opposition in a much more difficult political situation that led to an earlier than expected political retirement.
A key reason for the short-term triumph of government over party is that government deals with people every single day of the year, while the party efforts are focused on one, two or occasionally three days a year. Governments perform many functions intimately affecting peoples lives with large paid staffs, while parties are dependent on volunteers and fundraising to have any paid staff at all.
For a party organization to defeat a governmental official requires demonstrating greater competence at the business of government. Ned Lamont, for instance, has to demonstrate how his life experience better empowers him to deal with the minutia--vitally important minutia for those who depend on it--of Social Security, tax policies, enviromnental policies, immigration reform, welfare, education, etc. This is a tough task, and Lamont so far does not seem to have accomplished it.
The greatest spark of hope left for a Lamont victory is Republican nominee Alan Schlesinger, stuck around 4% in public opinion polls. It defies logic that a Republican could do so poorly in such an affluent state. The more votes that Schlesinger gets, the greater the Lamont chances of victory.
As a college student, I campaigned for Mayor Tate (1967) and Mayor Lindsay (1969) and I remember well how relatively easy beating the party organizations turned out to be. The great irony the Lamont campaign now faces is that the spirit of voter independence that fueled his primary candidacy is now spreading to the general electorate, where it it is torpedoing his candidacy.
An interesting example of the difficulty of pinning down a general election is the saga of Pittsburgh City Councilman Richard Caliguiri, who campaigned for support as Acting Mayor upon the resignation of Mayor Pete Flaherty to serve as Deputy Attorney General in the Carter Administration. Caliguiri won the vote of his fellow councilmen with a pledge not to enter the Democratic mayoral primary.
The the day after the primary was over, Mayor Caliguiri announced his third party candidacy. "I never said I would not run for Mayor; I just said I wouldn't enter the Democratic Primary," he explained to infuriated party officials.
Armed with the incumbency he had rather deviously obtained, Caliguiri was elected mayor decisively, and re-elected more than once. He died in office, and his statue now graces the building that houses Pittsburgh's city government. Many Pittsburghers think he was a great mayor.
But an unimpressed Pennsylvania legislature, in a move the Connecticut legislature may wish to emulate, banned anyone from running as a third party candidate who was a registered party member at the time of the previous primary.
Whatever happens in November in Connecticut, the message has been sent that large numbers of Democrats want an end to the war in Iraq. Connecticut Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are sending a counter message that they are loyal to their Democratic friends. But as the deaths in Iraq continue to mount up daily, I tend to doubt it will do them much good.
Obviously misguided policy is still obviously misguided policy even if someone can cobble together a victory in its name with a $20 million media campaign.