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7 February 2012

A Commissioner of Political Practices who sets
aside personal partisanship is a happy accident

Governor Brian Schweitzer appointed a new Commissioner of Political Practices yesterday: Jim Murry, the retired labor leader, and a Democrat. Murry may come to be regarded as a gray eminence. I hope so. He certainly has the administrative and interpersonal skills to restore harmony to the office of political practices. In time I think the staff will come to like working with him. All of that is good.

But his appointment is partisan. Under OPP’s current structure, a nonpartisan appointment is not a political possibility. If Murry sets aside his personal partisanship for the greater good, a distinct possibility, his appointment, although partisan, will be benignly partisan. That could happen, although the odds that Republicans would acknowledge it are hardly better than the odds of winning the lottery.

And that’s what cripples the OPP. A commissioner who sets aside personal partisanship is a happy accident. It is not the desired outcome of the governor making the appointment.