If city council races are "officially nonpartisan," then why did Republican candidates (the Laney Funderburk Three?) hold a press conference recently to announce they are running as a slate? Furthermore, they said they intend to provide potential Republican mayor Thomas Stith (make it the Funderburk Four?) with a majority to support their agenda.

How nonpartisan is that?

For a useful answer, we should go back to the beginning.

George Washington warned fellow leaders to avoid "factions" or political parties because of their divisiveness. It's certainly a nice notion that if everyone has the best interests of the community at heart, we can develop solutions without facing off, as Washington had hoped. Human nature being what it is, however, people can have the best interests of the community at heart and still differ on an ocean of issues: Who should be taxed more, the rich or the poor? Is the army big enough? Regulate the food industry? Or let the free market sort out the pure food from the poisonous?

So, differing opinions mean factions. Factions mean parties. And parties mean partisan primaries. Sorry, George.

Fast forward to the turn of the 20th century, when the parties had graduated from factions to vote buying and Tammany Hall-style corruption. Local parties had become smoke-filled backrooms fit only for give-and-take: giving construction contracts to cronies and taking kickbacks.

This Gilded Age corruption inspired the birth of the Progressive Party.

The Progressives generally believed in conserving the land, protecting consumers, fighting for workers and demanding fair business practices. The Progressives took on the nation's political and economic corruption on a broad front: trust-busting, regulating industry and the direct election of U.S. senators. The creation of nonpartisan elections at the local level-- like Durham's -- are examples of their many innovations.

These policies proved so effective and popular that three presidential candidates in 1912 -- Progressive, Democrat and Republican -- claimed the mantle of "progressive."

Fast forward again to the 21st century. We've come up with more direct methods for fighting corruption: the FBI, investigative journalism, the Freedom of Information Act. Rather than Tammany Hall-style corruption, most complaints about Durham's local governments can be understood using a statement I heard, made about Duke by one of their executives at a meeting with disgruntled neighbors: "It isn't that we're malevolent -- it's just that we're incompetent."

Durham does have the occasional scandal. But you have to look to Raleigh and the "partisan" General Assembly for the vote buying and crony coddling of old.

Durham's county-wide races are partisan affairs with primaries for each party. On the other hand, city council races are nonpartisan, meaning candidates needn't announce their affiliation. So what exactly are we gaining by having nonpartisan elections for city hall?

For decades some have said that nonpartisan make sense because supposedly "there is no Democratic or Republican way to pick up garbage." There isn't? Really? Don't some people want to spend more money on recycling and some less? Don't some want the workers to have better wages and some want to crack the whip? I never understood how a notion that's so ridiculous on its face got so much traction.

Which brings us back full-circle from Washington and factions, the Progressive Party and non-partisan races, to a Republican slate openly running for Durham City Council. To Republicans Laney Funderburk, Melodie Parrish, Steve Monks and Thomas Stith, I say "Bravo!" for their honesty. Other Republicans in the past have run essentially as stealth candidates, with vague policy statements about only supporting developments that would "enhance" the environment (define "enhance"). Stith's campaign slogan from the '90s -- "People Before Politics" -- is a good example. I guess he couldn't keep using that one with a straight face, given his votes against budgets that favored after-school funding for kids at-risk of joining gangs.

Bottom line, I think the hundred-year-old innovation of nonpartisan elections has outlived its usefulness and been replaced by better anti-corruption tools. And there are Democratic, Republican, Green and Libertarian ways of picking up garbage (or not ... if you're Libertarian). So we should dump that canard right next to nonpartisan elections in the circular file.

Or at least applaud candidates who drop the stealth tactics and do as the Funderburk Four have done, flying their true colors.