Many of the Democrats who switched did so to enfranchise themselves in the elections. Their party fielded no candidates this year for sheriff, county commissioner or register of deeds. Republicans have primaries for all of those positions, and the primary results will determine who is sworn in to the offices. So Democrats who want a say in the outcome had to become Republican or unaffiliated. Those who are registered unaffiliated may vote in either the Republican or Democratic primaries but not both.
What is particularly disturbing to those who remain loyal Democrats is that the registration shift has included some people who were once considered party stalwarts. Among those who have switched to unaffiliated are Mary McLaughlin Pope, a lawyer and former Superior Court judge who was appointed to the bench by former Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt. She is the daughter of Mary M. Pope, the Democratic chairwoman of the Moore County Board of Elections. Another is Charles G. Horne, Moore County’s last Democratic candidate for sheriff. And another is Robbins lawyer Frank Thigpen.
Thigpen made no bones about his defection from the Democrats. “I have a lot of friends running for office,” he said. “This is a very important primary election. That’s why I did it. It’s sad that it has to be that way, but this is an unusual year. It’s a one-sided issue, because most of the decisions will be made in the primary election.” In order to participate in those decisions, Thigpen had to give up his lifelong Democratic Party membership.
Of course, it’s always possible that Pope, Horne, Thigpen and others who have deserted the Democrats will rejoin their former party after the primary contests are settled. But even that would be a pyrrhic victory for Democrats and for two-party politics. Switching affiliation for the purpose voting in a party primary is casting a hit-and-run ballot. Those who were registered as unaffiliated until recently couldn’t vote in Democratic and Republican primaries. Allowing them to do so doesn’t strengthen either party. It doesn’t seem too much to ask a voter to be a member of a party in order to help determine the nominees of that party. That would encourage party membership. Though such affiliation is less fashionable these days, it has served the American political system well and can continue to do so.
Party membership affords voters the opportunity to make a difference in the way government serves its people. And membership in one of the two major parties is the best means of making that difference. Republicans and Democrats at the local, state and national levels keep each other honest. Competition between the two stabilizes government and politics by offering voters real choices between candidates and between philosophies — even though Democrats in Moore failed to meet that responsibility this year.
When he ran for president as a segregationist third-party candidate in 1968, George Wallace’s mantra was that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. That was just as untrue then as it is now. There were obvious policy differences in ’68 between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. And there are real and discernible differences now between George W. Bush and Tom Daschle, between Elizabeth Dole and Erskine Bowles Dole, between Harris Blake and Jimmy Love.
The voter registration deadline for this year’s primaries has passed, but if you’re unaffiliated, make it your business before the next one to join the party — whichever party — and become a part of an American political tradition that has made America the world’s model for Democratic government.
