Partisan tactics in nonpartisan race in Delray could backfire

In the race for mayor of Delray Beach, candidate Tom Carney is getting political support from an influential outside group, but he didn’t ask for it and doesn’t want it.

It’s the Palm Beach County Republican Party.

Carney is a land-use lawyer, banker, public finance expert, former commissioner and 30-year city resident who’s making his third try for mayor of the Village by the Sea. His opponents in the March 19 election are Vice Mayor Ryan Boylston, 41, and former commissioner Shirley Johnson, 77.

Carney is the recommended candidate of this paper’s Editorial Board in the threeway race to succeed term-limited Shelly Petrolia, who has been mayor for six years.

He’s also a registered Republican, and has been since his college days up in Massachusetts — even though, as he says, “half my family are Democrats.”

Is Carney’s party affiliation relevant in a nonpartisan race?

It shouldn’t be. All voters can vote. No party labels appear on the ballot. State election laws forbid candidates from stating their party affiliation.

But the March election ballot will also include, for Republicans only, a list of seven presidential candidates, including Donald J. Trump.

This is not a real primary. Every one of Trump’s rivals, except for Nikki Haley, has quit the race. So it’s questionable whether even hardcore Trumpers will bother to vote.

But Trump’s mere presence on the ballot, especially in his home county, is seen as enough to draw out Republicans who otherwise might ignore what’s usually a low-turnout election.

So, in an effort to boost turnout, the county Republican Party has blanketed GOP households in Delray with bright red mail pieces touting Carney as part of “our GOP team for Delray Beach.”

And in case voters still didn’t get the message, the piece says: “The Democrats are counting on low turnout to elect their progressive candidates and advance their Anti-America, radical agenda. We can’t let that happen!”

None of this nonsense was Carney’s doing, and it’s doubtful it will do him much good.

Such divisive rhetoric is par for the course in today’s MAGA-infested politics, but it could pose serious headaches for Carney over the next few weeks because it undercuts his basic message as a unifying force in an often-divided community, and as a candidate who tries to avoid ugliness and name-calling.

For one thing, the “radical agenda” talk is patently false, which Carney is the first to acknowledge.

“I don’t call my worst enemy ‘anti-American,'” Carney said. “This is not good.”

The mailer’s fine print says Carney approved it. A spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida, Helen Ferre, said the vendor that sent the mailer had “written consent” from Carney, which he disputes.

“I never saw it. I never approved it,” Carney said in an email.

He said he intercepted a second, similar piece that was already on a truck and headed to a printer’s, and from there to thousands and thousands of Delray mailboxes.

Carney’s strongest rival, Boylston, said of the mail piece: “We’ve never seen anything like it in Delray. It’s really sketchy politics.”

To get his message back on track, Carney said he’ll highlight his support from prominent Democrats and that future mailers will call him a “fiscal conservative,” not a conservative — a big difference.

You might say this is much ado about nothing.

Nobody reads political mail, and nobody who’s voting cares whether Carney is a Republican. They care about how he’ll control spending, overdevelopment and traffic — issues that transcend party politics.

As Carney says on the campaign trail, “There are just as many Republicans as Democrats sitting at traffic lights.”

Still, the GOP’s tired message that all Democrats are evil may seriously backfire and end up costing Carney votes, because Delray leans strongly Democratic. It’s also possible that some voters will reconsider voting for Carney now that they they know his party registration. The less a voter knows about a candidate, the more likely the candidate’s party ID is a factor.

According to the Palm Beach County elections website, 41% of Delray voters are Democrats, 29% are Republican and 30% are unaffiliated, or belong to a minor party.

A review of vote-by-mail requests for this election shows a much bigger imbalance: Through Feb. 19, more than half of all mail ballot requests (56%) were from Democrats, while 23% were from Republicans. It’s surely possible that most GOP voters will vote in person on Election Day, but the early signs clearly favor Democrats.

Boylston and Johnson are both Democrats, and Carney said he was barred from participating in four forums sponsored by Democratic political groups whose bylaws allow only Democrats to appear.

The Palm Beach County Republican Party, which did not respond to our two requests for comment, wants people to vote for Carney based purely on party loyalty. But astute voters should look far beyond such crude appeals and vote for the person, not the party.