It has been reported that Steven Hayes’ official Facebook candidate page for Morgan Hill City Council District B has banned community members for asking questions and deleted citizens’ comments. Mayor Mark Turner, Hayes’ mentor, has faced similar criticism over comment deletion and blocking on his official Mayor of Morgan Hill Facebook page.
What a coincidence, or perhaps not. Cleaved from the same stone. Cut from the same cloth.
Here’s a little civics lesson for candidates and elected officials who appear to be confusing public service with running a personal fan club.
The public is not your audience, the public is your constituency. People are allowed to ask questions, they are allowed to disagree. They are allowed to challenge your positions, question your decisions, criticize your voting record and demand explanations for how you intend to represent them.
That isn’t harassment, it isn’t disloyalty, it isn’t an attack on your character…it’s democracy.
If you cannot tolerate the occasional uncomfortable question from the very people whose votes you want, or whose interests you have sworn to represent, you might want to reconsider whether public office is the right fit.
Now, a distinction matters here, a private campaign page generally has more latitude to moderate comments than a government-operated or official page used to conduct public business.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lindke v. Freed established a test for determining when an official’s social media activity constitutes government action.
In Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff, the courts addressed public officials blocking constituents from social media accounts used for official business. Translation: You cannot turn a government-facing platform into a criticism-free zone simply because you dislike what the public has to say.
Officials can enforce reasonable, viewpoint-neutral rules against threats, spam and genuinely disruptive content. What they cannot do on a qualifying official government account is selectively silence people because their opinions are inconvenient, critical or politically uncomfortable.
And candidates? Even when the law permits moderation on a private campaign page, there remains a rather important question of judgment and character. You are asking people to trust you with their representation. What does it say about your potential leadership when the first response to a difficult question is to delete it or block the person asking?
What happens when that person is a constituent with a legitimate concern about public safety, housing, accessibility, transparency or the use of taxpayer dollars? Do you block them then, too?
A Facebook page is not a government office, but how you behave on it can tell the community something about how you regard the people you hope to serve.
Leadership is not the ability to control the conversation. It is the willingness to participate in one.
Mayor Turner and candidate Hayes may have their own explanations for their respective moderation practices. The reported conduct should be judged on its facts, and the legal rules depend on how each account is actually used.
But the lesson remains the same for every candidate and elected official in Morgan Hill: You do not get to demand public trust while treating public questions as an inconvenience. You do not get to campaign on representation while silencing the people seeking answers.
You certainly do not get to confuse the absence of criticism with public approval when you may have simply blocked the critics.
If you want a community that listens to you, start by demonstrating that you can listen to the community. Otherwise, you aren’t building public trust. You’re just curating your own little echo chamber.
Democracy does not require you to agree with your constituents. It does require you to understand that they are not there to serve your ego.
Karen Fitch
Morgan Hill
