Everybody’s business

Elected officials shouldn’t have to quit their jobs to ask for a promotion.

One of the most important employers in Texas has a weird policy.

If you want to ask the boss for a promotion, you have to quit your job before you can even apply. If the boss passes you over and hires somebody else, you’re out of luck and out of a job.

We know some smart and talented people working for this employer. They’ve got skills and experience the boss really needs. But they’re reluctant to apply for a promotion because they don’t want to quit their jobs.

Somebody needs to tell the boss this is a bad policy. That’s the point here. You’re the boss.

The employer is our government. Under the Texas election code, a candidate’s name generally cannot appear on the same ballot twice. In other words, Texans can’t run for two different offices on the same election day.

That means a woman who does a good job as, say, county clerk can’t run for the state Legislature without resigning from her current position. If she wins, she goes to Austin. If she’s loses, she goes to the unemployment line.

The upside of this rule is that it sometimes opens doors for new talent entering the political system. For example, a field of seven rookie Democratic candidates who’ve never before run for office all vied for their party’s nomination to run against GOP Congressman John Culberson. Some of them almost certainly would have stayed on the sidelines rather than face a bunch of well-financed competitors with established political names, like county officials or state legislators.

The downside is that some proven elected officials whom we could use in higher office don’t want to accept the risk. For example, state Rep. Gene Wu could have made a fine candidate for Congress if that’s where his ambitions aimed, but he would’ve had to surrender his seat in the Texas Legislature and gambled his political career to run against an incumbent.

Adding to the unfairness, our staggered election schedule allows some politicians to run for higher office without risk their seat. Houston’s city elections, for example, are held in odd-numbered years, while most other elections, such as the recently completed 2018 March 6 primaries, are held in even-numbered years. That allowed Adrian Garcia to run for sheriff of Harris County without endangering his Houston City Council seat, giving him an advantage over potential candidates holding other offices. In this primary season, state Rep. Kevin Roberts had to roll the dice and give up his seat in the Legislature to run for Congress — he’s now in a runoff. State Sen. Sylvia Garcia isn’t up for re-election until 2020, so if even if she had lost her congressional race she gets to keep her job in Austin.

This rule has a curious and thoughtprovoking exception. It doesn’t apply to candidates for president or vice president. That makes sense for Texas, a lesson proved in 1960. If John F. Kennedy, whose running mate was Lyndon Baines Johnson, had lost his presidential campaign, Texas would have continued to reap the benefits of Johnson remaining the most powerful member of the U.S. Senate. But Kennedy won, and Texas benefited from LBJ serving as vice president and eventually moving into the White House. (If you question whether LBJ helped Houston, take a drive down NASA Road 1. It’s called the Johnson Space Center for a reason.)

If it worked for LBJ, it should work for everybody. The same logic should apply to candidates up and down the ballot. We shouldn’t lose a good county clerk who has ambition for higher office, but who ultimately runs an unsuccessful race. Just as we shouldn’t have policies that discourage police or firefighters from seeking promotions, the law shouldn’t discourage effective elected officials from moving up the political ladder.

If Wells Fargo had a corporate policy that forced employees to give up their jobs to apply for a promotion, we’re pretty sure Warren Buffet would say it’s a bad idea and call for rescinding it. Just as Buffet is a shareholder in Wells Fargo, we’re all shareholders in government. We need to change state law to give our elected employees the freedom to apply for promotions without quitting their jobs.

Texans can’t run for two different offices on the same election day.