WASHINGTON WATCH : Open Hatch?

Since 1939 the Hatch Act has barred federal employees from serving as officers in a political party, managing political campaigns, working as volunteers in a candidate’s campaign office, soliciting contributions for a candidate or, not least in importance, running for office themselves. Thrice challenged before the Supreme Court, the act has been thrice upheld. In the eyes of the law and the court, the federal employees’ right to an irreducible minimum of political activity needs to be balanced with the taxpayers’ right to be preserved from funding their own employees’ lobbying.

Regrettably, the House has voted to repeal the Hatch Act, and the Senate is likely to do so soon, both times for partisan and otherwise short-sighted reasons. Democrats imagine that they will gain as largely Democratic federal employees unions go political. Republicans see a vote for labor that won’t much bother management.

The losers? We the people, who lose by this action a Civil Service that we can trust to be nonpolitical, and we the taxpayers, who may be willing to pay for political campaigns but not for political campaigning by mail carriers. In truth, this is not a partisan issue. If Los Angeles had a Hatch Act, the police officers union would be barred, as it should be, from taking sides in the mayoral election. At some future date, federal employees, now Democratic campaign-workers-in-waiting, may be Republican campaigners.

They should be nobody’s campaign workers. If nothing will stop repeal but a filibuster, then, for once, we urge just that.