By Philip Wilson
Special to The Globe
JOPLIN, Mo. —
I see the friends of Gary Nodler are out in force now. Of course, the fact that Gary Nodler has been a state senator all this time is not due to any exceptional ability on his part. Rather, no one bothered to challenge him until his term limits ran out.
Politicians, perhaps especially Republicans, wait their turn. And thus we miss opportunities to hire better public servants.
(This is why I don’t believe in term limits, by the way. If you know someone has to leave eventually, it becomes tempting to let them serve out four whole terms instead of challenging them after one. The better candidate doesn’t run when he’s needed; and then the best candidate may be lost in a multicandidate free-for-all when after eight or 16 years everyone who wants to run tries to take a chance.)
But Nodler has been good at one thing: playing the political game. He had the firm support of the party (or rather an unwillingness of the party to bother him). He had a safe district where the GOP practically always wins. (Joplinites break down into Republicans and nonvoters most of the time; people don’t vote Democrat because nobody else is, so they don’t see the point.) So he didn’t have to campaign.
Not that I think he’ll win the congressional nomination. His base is in Joplin, not Springfield. His main hope is that somehow no one in Joplin votes for a Springfield-based candidate and primary voters in Springfield and Branson split the ticket.
Well, we know him. The one time he was challenged for re-election to the state Senate was when an independent ran against him. She simply wanted to give voters a choice after no Democrats bothered to try. Nodler was so offended at having to use his campaign war chest for its legal intended purpose that he tried to rewrite the election law to prevent that kind of challenge from happening again.
Nodler is not a man who wants you to have a choice.
Philip Wilson
Joplin
