The Tea Party in Local Politics Jeffrey M. Berry Department of Political
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The Tea Party in Local Politics Jeffrey M. Berry Department of Political Science Tufts University Kent E. Portney Bush School of Government and Public Service Texas A&M University Robert Joseph Department of Political Science Tufts University Paper prepared for delivery at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August, 2014. © American Political Science Association. Corresponding author: [email protected] or @JeffreyMBerry 1 The Tea Party in Local Politics Abstract Since 2009 the Tea Party has disrupted and deeply influenced American politics. The force of the movement has been felt not only in the three election cycles since then, but also in the development of public policy. One area where Tea Party influence has been said to be significant is in the area of environmental sustainability. As local governments have moved toward adopting environmental measures aimed at promoting sustainability, there have been some cases where local Tea Parties have emerged as aggressive and strident opponents of related policy changes. How widespread this behavior has been is unclear. In this paper we look broadly at the Tea Party movement across the country and systematically assess its influence in urban America. Based on evidence we’ve gathered for a number of different databases, we find that the Tea Party has not had a measurable impact on city policymaking in the area of sustainability. Moreover, we find that local Tea Party chapters generally have very limited organizational capacity to engage in advocacy. Across 50 large American cities, our findings indicate that the typical Tea Party chapter is at best a modest presence in local politics. 1 The Tea Party in Local Politics At an October, 2013 open meeting held to discuss environmental and sustainability planning for the city of Watertown, Massachusetts, the assembled residents were divided into five breakout groups. One dealt with transportation issues and when the session leader mentioned that some parking spots may need to be eliminated to accomplish the city’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, a conservative activist responded that “roads were built for cars and cars are what made America what it is. Government shouldn’t take away our rights, which is our automobiles.” His demeanor suggested that this position was non-negotiable—under no circumstances should Watertown pursue steps aimed at promoting environmental protection that violated constitutional (if not biblical) principles. Over the course of our research, we’ve heard many such stories and read about similar incidents at a variety of open meeting venues. As we’ll detail below, concern has mounted among environmentalists, planners, government officials, developers, and others over the attack by conservative activists on proposals aimed at promoting sustainability. This has been particularly worrisome at the local level where government is most permeable and participatory opportunities for rank-and-file citizens are most open. Here we explore the attack on sustainability efforts in local politics. Drawing on a comprehensive inventory of environmental protection programs in 50 American cities, separate surveys of city councilors, agency administrators, and interest group leaders in those 50 cities, and elite interviews with heads of local Tea Parties in many of the same cities, we systematically examine the presence and impact of conservative activism aimed at blocking sustainability initiatives. We proceed by first articulating the reasons underlying our focus on sustainability planning, our choice of city governments as our testing ground, and our selection of Tea Party organizations as a window into the conservative critique of sustainability. With this foundation in hand we then discuss what we know about the Tea Party in relation to city politics and more fully develop the lines of inquiry to be followed in the data analysis. After describing the various databases we draw on, we then test a number of different conjectures concerning the Tea Party, city government, and sustainability. Cities and Sustainability In the pages that follow we tie together many lines of research involving sustainability and environmental protection, public policymaking, and citizen advocacy to the changing nature of American cities. But why cities? We certainly do not argue that our questions are best answered in cities rather than at the state, national, or international level. Surely, the optimum approach would be a comprehensive analysis of all such arenas. What we do argue, though, is that cities offer some unique opportunities for understanding how environmentalism is advanced (or not), and how citizen lobbies affect policymaking. Without offering a full review of city-level sustainability and environmentalism, let us note that a central reason why we chose an urban focus is because within the United States cities have become leaders in pursuing sustainability. It is not only liberal cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco that are well known for their aggressive pursuit of sustainability policies and programs. Rather, those high in the sustainability rankings include a broad range of cities, such 2 as Chattanooga, Jacksonville, and Charlotte. (Portney, 2013).1 Operating within the resource constraints common today in urban America, cities have forged ahead to try to protect the environment while at the same time promoting economic development. In contrast, sustainability initiatives at the state and national levels have been stifled by political opposition. The Republican Party has been especially hostile toward steps aimed at combating global climate change, even cap and trade, a market-based approach initially developed by conservative economists. In contrast to national politics, city politics offers dramatically different political divisions. Demographically, of course, large American cities present a sharp contrast to the broader American population. Atlanta is in Georgia but Atlanta politics and Georgia politics orbit in different solar systems. One of the most profound differences between cities and the state and national levels is that the urban business sector is decidedly more progressive. Largely due to the decline of manufacturing and the demographic transformation of cities, local business leaders are much more responsive to concerns ignored or even fought by business groups in Washington. Our research demonstrates that local business groups are far more sympathetic to sustainability initiatives than their state and national counterparts. These local business leaders recognize the importance of greening their cities; they also understand how sustainability can lead to broader economic development. It’s easy to equate “environmental protection” with “sustainability.” Although there is a great deal of overlap, the focus here is specifically on sustainability. The most widely accepted definition, as found in the 1987 report of the Brundtland Commission, holds that sustainable development consists of economic activity that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, 8). In such a world current generations are obligated to work to eliminate or mitigate various forms of pollution, global climate change, and other manifestations of environmental degradation. The ways in which this philosophy is turned into practice involves a wide range of programs and policies designed to diminish our collective footprint through regulation, exhortation, and technological advancements. There is great optimism on cities’ potential for spearheading a movement to a sustainable future. Some European cities, for example, have implemented ambitious and impressive smart growth strategies (Fitzgerald, 2010). The much revered Brundtland Commission noted that “local authorities usually have the political power and credibility to take initiatives and to assess and deploy resources in innovative ways reflecting unique local conditions. This gives them the capacity to manage, control, experiment, and lead urban development” for the good of the environment (WCED, 1987, 242). In turn, mayors and other local leaders have mobilized to promote sustainability beyond their own local endeavors. These efforts include the Climate Protection Programme of ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability, the Climate Protection Agreement of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the Climate Initiative of the Clinton Foundation. Each one of these initiatives asks urban leaders to commit their cities to reduce their 1 The rankings and associated Sustainability Scores of American cities we use come from Kent Portney’s ongoing analyses of the largest 55 cities in the United States. The most current ratings can be found at the Our Green Cities web site, http://ourgreencities.com:80/. 3 carbon footprint and to attack greenhouse gas emissions. In turn, the institutions promoting these plans provide technical assistance to the cities committing themselves to sustainability programs (Portney and Berry, 2014). POSTMATERIAL CITIES Expectations of an urban push toward sustainability are fueled by the evolving economic and social character of American cities. It wasn’t too long ago that scholars were worried about an urban death spiral (Bradbury, Downs, and Small, 1982; Bartlett, 1988; Banfield,1990; Sugrue, 1996). Decades of migration out to the suburbs by whites and migration into the cities by low income