Stalwarts, Socialists, and Reformers: The Contested Meaning of Nonpartisan Politics in Progressive Era Wisconsin

• In Event: 41052 - Electoral Politics

Abstract

What does it mean to be nonpartisan in a moment of intense partisan conflict? Today, this question confronts thousands of politicians serving in the many cities nationwide that hold nonpartisan local elections. Revisiting the origins of nonpartisan local government provides new insight into the complex and contradicting ways that politicians—across the political spectrum—have understood the meaning of nonpartisanship. This paper examines the Progressive Era movement to adopt nonpartisan local politics in Wisconsin from 1900 - 1920. Analyzing the newspaper coverage of nonpartisan reform efforts, official proceedings of state and local political bodies, and the papers of key political leaders at the time, we seek to reconstruct how different political actors understood, deployed, and exploited nonpartisanship. We track the evolution of understandings of nonpartisanship across three periods in the early 20th Century: The first period, from 1900 to 1910, examines the original call for nonpartisan reform by Progressive Reformers, echoed by Socialists and fiercely opposed by party incumbents. The second period, from 1910 to 1912, captures the fallout from the election of Socialist Mayor Emile Seidel, the brief alliance between party stalwarts and progressive reformers, and the ultimate adoption of nonpartisan local elections. The final period, from 1912 to 1920, examines the disintegration of the coalition that had supported nonpartisan reform, the failure of reform to stop Socialism in Milwaukee, and the weaponization of nonpartisanship against Socialists and Progressives alike. Tracing the changes in coalitions and discourses around nonpartisanship in this way allows us to capture how this concept gained meaning and how that meaning was contested as events unfolded. Specifically, we argue that as nonpartisanship developed as a cultural category, it escaped the control of the parties who had initially endorsed it and became a tool available to various actors to pursue political gain.

Authors

• Benjamin Hirsch Witkovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Carter Burg, University of Wisconsin - Madison