I was wondering today just how “voluntary” membership in the Democratic or Republican parties is. Sure, they want the average schmo out there to join and vote for their candidates. But what about the following?
Can a politician who is involved in scandal, etc., ever be thrown absolutely out of the party?
Can a member of Congress always choose to cross the aisle (= join the other side) if he or she so wishes? Or is a formal invitation, etc., required?
If you could answer these questions and provide any related material, I’d be grateful.
Anybody can call themselves a member of any party. Anybody can run as a member of any party. Anybody can win an election as a member of any party. There is nothing the parties can do to stop this. As long as a person meets the state’s requirements for appearing on a ballot, which merely means getting enough legal signatures on a petition, that person can run in primaries or in elections.
The individual people who are party members can choose not to cooperate with a person they want to distance themselves from, and can prevent party funds or assistance from going to a person. They could, I suppose, call that person names and say “Fie. Begone.” But a vote in a legislature is not made as part of a party; it’s made as a collection of individuals. If people wants to call themselves part of a party and vote the party line, there’s nothing on earth to stop them.
Believe me, if parties could throw people out, the Democrats would have chucked perennial presidential candidate and first-class looney Lyndon Larouche on his ear and the Republicans would have stripped Alan Keyes of his party affiliation this past election year.
The closest thing I can recall to someone being kicked out of a party was when Henry Clay held a ceremony to formally “read out” John Tyler of the Whig Party. Clay was upset that Tyler had vetoed a bill chartering a Bank of the U.S. (It would have been the third one.)
Eventually all of Tyler’s Cabinet resigned.
This problem could have been avoided if the Whigs hadn’t picked a VP candidate who only joined their party in a fit of pique. Tyler was really a Democrat.
Clay had not also taken into account that a president could actually die in office.
There are the “registered Joes” these are people who when they got their voter’s registration cards registered as Republicans/Democrats and have never donated a cent or done a single thing with the actual party machine.
I’d be shocked if the party offices could even find their names anywhere in the party’s files.
Then there are members of the “party” who either hold party office, donate money to the party, work with the party day in day out, or are politicians.
The "partY’ can eject anyone simply by removing them from their position within the party (if they are party employees) or by not giving them a single cent of support come election time (for politicians) and not giving them any support on legislative initiatives.
So more or less a party can “kick” someone out for all practical purposes. Politicians belong to parties because 1) it = campaign money, 2) it = voters, because voters know what Dem/Republican means so you instantly have a good base of roughly 40% of the electorate either way, 3) support for legislative initiatives (and certian bills are very important for keeping your job) and 4) support of other national party officials come campaign time (like photo-ops with the President or a very popular Senior Senator in your state et cetera.)
If you piss off the party enough all of that could go away. And the party could put a lot of money into a rival candidate come next nomination and unless you are in a “safe” seat, that’d probably be the end of your career as a politician.
So some politicians are immune. Jeffords survived because he was in a fairly safe seat and in Vermont they are “different” so to speak.
Robert Byrd could probably sever all times with the Democratic party and continue to win 90% of the vote, he’s been in office since the 1950s, that’s a seat that is voided upon death and not a minute before.
The Democratic and Republican Parties don’t maintain formal nationwide membership rolls, so they don’t really want people to “join”. They want you to get on their mailing lists and send money and vote for their candidates, and that’s about all. There are various subordinate organizations such as the Young Democrats and College Republicans that you can join, and I imagine that those organizations can and do expel malcontents from time to time, but you can’t really “join” the party as a whole.
Some states allow you to declare a preference for a political party when you register to vote, but the party has no control over this and can’t prevent people that they don’t like from registering in their name.
The Libertarian Party, by contrast, does charge dues, maintain a membership roll, and expel recalcitrant members. Of course, even an expelled person can still call themselves a Libertarian, register to vote as a Libertarian (in states that allow partisan registration), and run for office as a Libertarian if they can win a nomination. There is no way any party can prevent this.
In light of the above, obviously not, but a member of a legislature can be expelled from the party caucus. This prevents the legislator from voting for the party leadership or from receiving committee assignments through the party. The Democrats in Congress did this to Jim Trafficant in 2001.