Campaigns take anti-democratic turn, Pa. voters should hold them accountable

Pennsylvania voters are about to flex enormous power at the ballot box.

Who wins retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate. Which party ultimately triumphs in the governor’s race could either maintain Pennsylvania’s divided government or give Republicans a powerful trifecta.

It is why so much money is being pumped into the state to sway opinion. And it is why it is more crucial than ever for voters to rise above that distracting noise and vitriol and seek reliable, independent information to inform their vote in the May 17 primary and in November.

But increasingly, the traditional wellsprings of our democratic process are under attack. Profiles written by journalists, debates moderated by the free press and other nonpartisan stakeholders, endorsement interviews, candidate forums and more founder as candidates retreat to self-serving echo chambers that variously impede transparency, traffic in misinformation and chip away at the American experiment.

Here are just some of the examples we have seen during this pivotal election cycle:

In February, the Pennsylvania Republican Party broke with tradition and met secretly in Lancaster County to weigh party endorsements for governor, lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate. Reporters, who had previously covered the second day of the proceedings, the endorsement votes, were not just barred from that proceeding; they were not even allowed in the hotel lobby, as detailed by LancasterOnline.com, Pennlive.com and others.

Free speech advocates criticized the move. So did some Republicans.

In March, four Republican candidates in the gubernatorial primary announced they would not take part in debates unless they could control the terms. They eventually participated in various debates, but their initial feint coincided with a larger play as Republicans in high-profile races across the country were skipping primary debates altogether and the Republican National Committee announced plans to withdraw from the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

And it is not just debates. Politicians stonewall journalists on questions routine and deadly serious.

Our statehouse reporters had to piece together some standard candidate profiles from published accounts because candidates did not make themselves available to answer questions.

We here in the USA Today Pennsylvania Network Viewpoint section forwarded reader-submitted questions — most of them boilerplate inquiries on matters of concern to Pennsylvanians such as wages and abortion — to primary candidates for governor and U.S. Senate. Only seven of 21 candidates contacted bothered to respond.

Beyond kitchen-table politics, enormous questions loom over the ballot box this cycle about faith in our institutions and the truth about the free, fair, fully vetted 2020 election. Candidates’ positions on those issues could prove fateful to the future of voting rights and the American experiment.

And yet too many of them are not talking.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that in January it asked leading Republican Senate candidates if they believed Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election and if they would have voted to certify Pennsylvania’s election results — as departing Republican Sen. Pat Toomey and 91 other U.S. senators did. Jeff Bartos alone acknowledged Biden’s victory, but he and others declined to say if they would have upheld the will of Pennsylvania voters.

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, of York County, is running for reelection, and state Sen. Doug Mastriano is a leading candidate in the GOP primary for governor. Both are key figures in the Trump administration’s depraved efforts to overturn Biden's 2020 win, but each has declined to answer questions about those events from our statehouse team.

Republicans bear the brunt of shame, as some in the conservative movement have for decades sought to undermine trust in traditional journalism while at the same time erecting a partisan media machine in which to wax power.

But the duck-and-cover contortions of some GOP candidates this cycle also arise from a shameful, corrosive crisis of the party’s own making. To win the primary, even candidates who once might have been considered moderate must appeal to a base wrongly convinced by too many party leaders, conspiracy-theorists and right-wing media celebrities that the 2020 election was stolen from them. At the same time, if they are to succeed in November, they must reserve the ability to appeal to a wider, more moderate Pennsylvania electorate that rejects that patent falsehood.

There is a way out. Simply tell the truth and restore faith. What urgent policy platforms might be freed up for discussion if so much time did not have to be spent kowtowing to the Big Lie and pledges to restore election integrity that is in scant need of repair?

That said, there are concerning signs across the aisle as well.

Democrat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a grassroots fundraising juggernaut, campaigns nonstop statewide across all 67 counties as he leads the race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. His rural outreach represents an overdue, welcome paradigm shift in Democratic campaigning strategies. But he has drawn scrutiny for his failure to appear at some key candidate forums and events.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that some Democrats fear it amounts to avoiding hard questions that will surely find him in the general election should he win the nod. Forget party bosses. Voters might also want to know how he will withstand the crucible to come.

To be clear, candidates should always take their cases directly to the voter. The terms "barnstorming" and "stumping" are part of our election vocabulary for good reason.

But when candidates limit their audiences, strategize key decisions in secret, sidestep questions from outside observers, the press, they deprive our democracy of the element it requires to survive — truth.

The Founders did not establish the right of the free press in the very First Amendment simply to indulge journalists’ idle curiosity or line their pockets. A free press exists to seek truth and establish facts independent of leaders’ spin. That ability to investigate and question government, make it answerable to the people, instead of the reverse, is Hamilton's "world turned upside down." Without it, power tips back into the hands of the entitled and oppressive, all too willing to manipulate reality to serve their own, not the peoples’ interests. As Thomas Jefferson put it, "our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

Traditional news outlets have taken a beating with the onslaught of digital information, much of it unvetted and deliberately misleading. High-profile, self-inflicted institutional failures have eroded trust in the media.

Nonetheless, recent research shows that most community newspaper readers vote and rate their local newspapers as the most “trusted” source (of all mediums tested) when it comes to learning about candidates for public office.

The press — representing the people — is not a negligible party to be chucked aside in a free society.

Do your homework. Vote. And when you do, don’t shrug off any attempt to limit a clear line of sight on those who would lead you. Truth is your power. Insist on it.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Campaigns take anti-democratic turn, voters should hold them accountable