For over 80 years, Tucson has used partisan city elections. In 2009 the Arizona legislature passed a law, telling all cities that they must use non-partisan elections. On April 6, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled unanimously that if charter cities wish to hold partisan elections, they may do that, notwithstanding any law that the legislature may have passed. Here is the 24-page opinion. The case is City of Tucson v State of Arizona, cv11-0150.
Tucson is the only city in Arizona with partisan city elections. Generally, Democrats do better than Republicans in city elections in Tucson.
How many suicidal States are there — permitting local monarchy/oligarchy regimes to get going ???
A curiosity is that the Tucson charter (Article XVI, Section 2) does not actually provide for partisan elections. It provides for elections consistent with the general election laws of the State of Arizona. It may be more tradition to use partisan, rather than non-partisan elections.
The charter provision (Article XVI, Section 9) that is rarely mentioned is that nomination of city council members is by district primary, with the general election at large. The Arizona statute would have eliminated both partisan elections and the nomination by district, election at-large provisions in Tucson.
The proposed Top 2 initiative would replace the existing Arizona Constitution (Article 7, Section 10) with an Open Top 2 Primary. It would apply to all elections, except non-partisan elections and presidential elections.
It would appear that the effect would be that the Arizona legislature would have to write general election laws that implement the Top 2 Open Primary, and that these would be applicable to the legislature, statewide offices, and cities that use partisan elections (eg Tucson) would have to use Top 2 primaries for their nominations.
Unless the Arizona Supreme Court were to decide that city charters could supersede the state constitution, it would apply to Tucson.
I think it could be interpreted in a way that would permit nomination by district, election at-large, since it basically states that party affiliation shall not be a qualification to vote, so long as a voter is otherwise qualified to vote in an election. In this case, the qualification to vote in primary is based on residency in the district.
One precedent that the court cited was that in 1912 when the Phoenix city charter provided for non-partisan elections, at a time when state law provided for partisan labels generally on state, county, and local offices.
If whether Tucson uses partisan labels on its ballots is a matter of solely local interest; then it would be reasonable for Tucson to permit local parties to compete in its elections. What interest is to the legislature whether the Tucson Good Government party is on the ballot for city council elections in Tucson?
But that also implies that the legislature could decide that party affiliation is only of interest for state, legislative, and county elections; and forbid use of the party affiliation records for other purposes, such as city elections. Tucson could then simply provide for its own system of party affiliation.
For younger folks- AZ was the last State in the old 48 (with all of the accumulated strange stuff) — before AK and HI.