Misbehavior not exclusive to one party, but right now, accountability is

Scandal in the Los Angeles City Council is nothing new. And normally, it wouldn’t be a topic of discussion for a Las Vegas newspaper. But the revelations over the past week of blatant racism among the city’s power brokers brought an important difference between the country’s two major political parties into sharp contrast.

If you missed the story, three members of the Los Angeles City Council, all Democrats and all Latinos, were caught on tape engaged in racist, homophobic and antisemitic banter. Their hateful rhetoric targeted everyone from a Black toddler and his same-sex parents to people from several minority racial and ethnic identities.

The backlash from the recording was swift, with the former president of the city council resigning both from her position as president and from the council itself. The president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the second-largest union in the United States, has also resigned due to his involvement.

While little good will ever come from the use of such divisive language, the aftermath has laid bare the differences between how the two major political parties respond to reprehensible actions by their members.

In just one week since the recordings were revealed, Democrats across the country, from local LA elected officials all the way up to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even President Joe Biden, offered swift condemnation and a call for all involved to resign. A similar pattern of swift accountability can be seen from Democratic leadership in the past.

Going all the way back to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, when 31 Democrats voted to move forward with a trial against the president, Democrats have demanded accountability for their own members’ wrongdoings. The most recent example came just this year, when dozens of Democrats condemned members of their own party leadership for a decision by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to spend millions of dollars propping up far-right extremists in primary elections.

Compare that with the Republican Party, which right now is simply refusing to talk about allegations of domestic abuse against Herschel Walker. Walker, an anti-abortion absolutist, has also been accused of paying one of his sexual partners to have an abortion.

Or in 2016, when multiple allegations of sexual misconduct were leveled against Donald Trump — including going into dressing rooms while underage girls in his beauty pageants were changing. Not only was Trump’s conduct not punished, it was normalized, dismissed as irrelevant and then somehow transformed into “fake news.” Forgive our crassness, but let’s not forget that the media didn’t invent the phrase “grab ’em by the … you know what;” that came from Trump, caught on camera. Trump has yet to face any consequences from his own party members.

Meanwhile, of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, only two survived primary challenges from their own party.

This points to perhaps a more disturbing trend in Republican politics: the idea that while engaging in actual misconduct goes unpunished, those who question party dogma will face swift retribution.

Here in Nevada, when former Republican Party Chair Amy Tarkanian endorsed two Democrats — noting that their Republican challengers were unqualified and threatened the state’s future prosperity — she was removed from the party within days.

In Arizona, Rusty Bowers didn’t even endorse a Democrat. All he did was respond to a congressional subpoena and tell the truth under oath — as he constitutionally swore to do. But because telling the truth meant providing evidence against Trump, he was censured by the Republican Party and lost his primary bid for the state Senate.

Despite their claims of being the party of free speech, personal accountability and law and order, the Republican Party’s retribution against those who engage in free speech to create accountability for their members who violate the law seems both swift and absolute. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, “canceling” the voices of people they disagree with is not a tactic used exclusively by the left.

We receive emails, phone calls and letters almost every day at the Sun that advocate for the need to, as Trump put it, “drain the swamp” of corruption in politics.

And we agree, our state and our country would be better off if we were better at holding our elected officials accountable for their unethical, immoral and even criminal conduct.

Which is why the Democratic Party’s response to the LA City Council racism scandal is so illuminating. Democrats are far from perfect. And intelligent minds can disagree about what conduct should be worthy of punishment. But there can be no question that right now, Democrats all the way up the ranks of the party are at least attempting to hold their members accountable, even if it means they lose some power. Republicans, on the other hand, seem too focused on amassing the power to impose a radical agenda that limits free speech and takes away people’s rights, to be troubled by little things like ethics or the law.

Fortunately, we have the power to hold them accountable ourselves. By turning out to the polls and voting.