The local Republican women have a right to invite anyone they want to address their organization, and to exclude anyone they dont want.
Still, their decision to hear from only school board candidates who are registered Republicans was a mistake in several ways, and it would have been a mistake if it had been made by the Democrats, the Greens or any other group.
Re-1 students will face many choices in their lives. They need to learn to consider all available information and to analyze it within a critical framework before making decisions. The Republican Womens Club has failed to model such skill.
Inviting all candidates and assessing how their positions fit with Republican values is a far more logical action than just inviting the 50 percent who appear, on the basis of a single criterion, to match well. Party registration is not an infallible sign of political philosophy. Some former Republicans left the GOP after the presidential nomination of John McCain and other unpalatable moves; other voters register as Republicans so they can vote in important local primaries, and still others refuse to register an affiliation because they dont want the mountain of mailings it brings. More and more simply are disgusted with the whole partisan circus.
By declining to include candidates whose positions may not be straight-ticket GOP, they signaled that they are not interested in conversing with anyone whose ideas even might different from their own.
Political decision-making benefits from vigorous debate. If the other candidates expressed ideas that were wrong, the Republican candidates could have rebutted those statements. If the other candidates ideas were good, the candidate pool and the discussion would have been strengthened.
And if the ideas of all eight candidates were congruent as they certainly must be on at least some issues that is valid evidence that the local tradition of non-partisan school board elections has worked well and should continue. In the past, those elections have been very civilized affairs, with little of the political nastiness that characterizes other races and serves no one well.
Many issues are not understood best as conflicts between left and right. For example, all four Republican candidates indicated support for the BEST grant application, an example of large government involvement with strings attached, but also perhaps the best solution to a difficult problem.
The board must be able to represent the entire population fairly, and to view the schools and the community from all sides. Re-1 serves students whose parents are not Republicans, and older students who may identify with another party. The district employs faculty and staff whose politics probably cover a fairly wide spectrum.
The school district should be run, and staffed, by the most qualified individuals available, and in education, many qualifications are more important than party affiliation. Voters of all stripes must be dedicated, first, to providing the best education possible for all the communitys students. Believing that the worst Republican is better at that than the best anyone else has to offer is an illogical that relates more closely to power than to public service.
