The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Mark Stegeman
The freedom to form political parties is the pinnacle of the freedom of association guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. So, the effort by Arizona’s “No Labels” party to rename itself the Arizona Independent Party should be uncontroversial.
Yet Arizona’s Republican and Democratic parties have each sued to block the change. So has the Clean Elections Commission, over the dissent of Steve Titla, its lone Democrat. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes, also Democrats, have dismissed the plaintiffs' objections and asserted that the current No Labels party is constitutionally free to associate under its preferred name.
The cases remain pending in Maricopa County Superior Court, but bring no honor to the plaintiffs. They should be dropped before the litigation delay increases the confusion that the lawsuits supposedly seek to avert.
The efforts to change No Labels’ name — and to block that change — reflect recognition that the renamed party could attract many votes. Recent voter registration data show that Arizona is 36% Republican, 28% Democratic (both trending down), 2% other parties, and 34% unaffiliated (both trending up). The potential demand for a centrist third party is apparent.
Some of that demand comes from public exhaustion over the partisan wrangling now consuming most layers of U.S. governance. So, the new name fits: Voters may seek a party that stands independent of this intramural combat. The party’s website quotes John Kennedy: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
Ignoring Kennedy’s exhortation, the two major parties increasingly define and sustain themselves, like George Orwell’s three fictional megastates, by the endless warfare between them. Their lawsuits merely reinforce the impression that they are afraid to disturb that equilibrium by enabling a third party that shuns such warfare.
The creation and dissolution of political parties is typically messy. The breakup of the (Jeffersonian) Republican Party in the 1820s was protracted and messy, until Andrew Jackson consolidated one faction leading into the 1828 national election, and the Whig Party consolidated the opposing factions leading into the 1840 election.
One wing of the Jeffersonian Republicans eventually became the modern Democratic Party, which still confuses people. But no one tried to stop that process in court.
The 1944 merger of Minnesota’s Democratic and Farmer Labor parties, into the ongoing Democratic Farmer Labor Party, was a simpler example of partisan realignment. The merger had opponents on both sides, but no one went to court.
These and other party realignments have been properly resolved by debates, conventions, caucuses, and ballots — not litigation. Voters can associate but also dissociate, as they often do when parties’ policy positions evolve. But no one has sued the major parties for (say) their frequent reversals on trade policy, which are far more significant than No Labels’ name change.
The main issue distinguishing the present case is the plaintiffs' claim that voters could confuse joining the Arizona Independent Party with the option of remaining independent or unaffiliated.
This reflects the political classes’ tendency to think voters are dumber than they are.
On the written registration form, how many voters would accidentally write in “Arizona Independent Party” when they actually wanted to check the box for “No party / Unaffiliated”? On the online registration form, how many would accidentally check the box for “Arizona Independent Party” when they actually wanted to check “No Party Preference”?
What about North Dakota's Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party? That name seems confusing! But North Dakotans have navigated that confusion since 1956. The Nonpartisan League was closely tied to the Republican Party before it merged with the Democrats, but its Republican members did not protest the change in court.
Freedom of association is a messy process, but the rights of political parties to chart their own destinies have rarely been challenged in the United States.
The current plaintiffs should honor history and the Constitution and let the change proceed. The two major parties should rebuild their numbers by refreshing their brands, not by throwing roadblocks in front of new entrants.
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