Tribal politics is turning neutral officials into the enemy.
A troubling pattern is spreading across American public life: people lose their positions, or face organized campaigns to remove them, for simply doing the job they were hired or elected to perform. The offense is not corruption or incompetence. It is neutrality. Officials who apply statutes, codes, and procedures evenhandedly are treated as the problem when the outcome displeases a mobilized faction.
The latest example is unfolding in McKinney, Texas. In early August 2026, after a raucous public hearing, the City Council unanimously approved a site plan for a mosque and Islamic center. Council members stated the proposal met the city’s development standards. Within days, a recall petition targeted Mayor Bill Cox and three council members, Ernest Lynch, Geré Feltus, and Justin Beller. The stated ground was a vague “loss of public confidence.” Organizers must collect 5,805 valid signatures by September 26.
The McKinney Pattern
Supporters insist the drive reflects broader frustrations over growth, spending, and responsiveness. Timing and rhetoric tell a clearer story. The council’s duty was to apply the zoning and site-plan rules equally. Denying a compliant religious land-use application because of neighborhood opposition would have invited legal challenge under the First Amendment and federal religious-land-use protections. They followed the code. That decision now underpins an effort to remove them.
This is not a local anomaly. The same dynamic appears wherever officials refuse to treat the written rules as optional.
Zoning Fights From California to Massachusetts
In Fairfax, California, Mayor Lisel Blash and Vice Mayor Stephanie Hellman faced a 2025 recall centered on zoning changes that enabled a large apartment project. California’s Housing Element law required the town to plan for hundreds of new units.
Officials said they were complying with a state mandate they could not legally ignore. Recall backers argued they should have found a way to block the density. Voters ultimately rejected the recall, but the attempt sent a clear message: officials who follow the statute do so at their own risk.
In Newton, Massachusetts, longtime councilor Deborah Crossley led a zoning rewrite to allow more multifamily housing near transit, as required by the state’s MBTA Communities law. Residents opposed to the density change made her the face of the effort. She and two colleagues who supported the plan lost their seats. Crossley observed the irony of being cast as a villain for addressing a housing shortage the state had legally required cities to plan for.
When Election Officials Become Targets
After the 2020 election, local and state election administrators whose job is to canvass and certify results according to law faced an unprecedented wave of threats, doxxing, and pressure. Officials who followed the legal process, rather than “finding” votes or refusing certification, received death threats and, in many cases, left the profession. Surveys found one in three election officials felt unsafe because of their work. Their duty was ministerial. Performing it became a personal and professional hazard.
The pattern is consistent. Officials are punished not for breaking the rules but for applying them when the result is politically inconvenient.
Why Tribal Politics Produces This Pattern
This is a predictable result of tribal politics. In a tribal frame, institutions and processes are not shared constraints; they are weapons or obstacles. The primary loyalty is to the group and its preferred outcomes, not to the rules that bind everyone.
When the tribe loses on a zoning decision, an election certification, or a housing mandate, the neutral official who followed the law becomes the enemy. Neutrality itself is reframed as betrayal or capture by the other side. The demand shifts from “apply the statute” to “deliver our result, or be removed.”
Both sides practice the logic. Progressive activists pressure officials who enforce immigration rules or resist certain curriculum mandates. Conservative activists target officials who approve religious land uses or certify election results they dislike.
The content differs; the method does not. Once the expectation takes hold that public servants exist to serve the tribe rather than the law, competence and impartiality become liabilities. The system begins to select for those willing to treat the code as flexible and the political temperature as decisive.
The Costs Compound
Capable people with options outside public life simply decline to serve. Why accept the scrutiny and exposure if the reward for evenhanded application of the law is a petition drive or a campaign of personal harassment? The talent pool shrinks. What remains is a narrower group: the ideologically committed who treat office as a platform, the conflict-tolerant who thrive on combat, and those who learn early that survival requires reading the political temperature more carefully than the statute books.
Those who stay adapt. Officials begin to delay, hedge, or quietly sidestep inconvenient requirements. A compliant site plan is tabled for “further study.” A state-mandated housing element is softened until the heat dissipates. Election certification is treated less as a duty and more as a negotiation. The written rule does not vanish; it simply becomes optional when the loudest faction objects. Decision-making shifts from neutral standards to constituency management. Land-use outcomes start reflecting who can pack a hearing room. Election administration drifts toward loyalty tests.
The Erosion of Trust and Governance
Public confidence pays the price next. When people repeatedly watch officials punished for following the law, trust in the rules themselves declines. Citizens begin to believe outcomes are determined by organizing power rather than process. That belief fuels further polarization: if the system is already captured, maximal pressure becomes a rational strategy. Both sides learn the lesson. The next cycle features sharper demands that officials choose a side instead of applying the code.
Governance quality suffers in quieter ways. Complex problems that require steady, multi-year application of rules- housing supply, infrastructure, election integrity- suffer. Short-term political survival crowds out long-term competence. Institutional memory thins as experienced administrators leave. Newcomers inherit a culture of caution rather than clarity. The rule of law, meant to constrain power and provide predictability, starts to look like just another bargaining chip in the permanent campaign.
The Line Between Accountability and Punishment
Citizens retain every right to circulate petitions and hold officials accountable. Recall exists for a reason. The problem arises when the tool is deployed not against corruption, lawbreaking, or clear dereliction, but against the neutral application of the law itself. One strengthens democratic control. The other weakens the conditions that make democratic control legitimate.
Tribal politics does not merely produce bad manners or sharper rhetoric. It systematically undermines the expectation that public officials will apply shared rules rather than deliver preferred results.
When doing the job becomes the reason for losing the job, fewer people show up willing to do it straight. The pattern is already visible in zoning fights, election administration, and education policy. Left unchecked, it produces a public sector that is more political, less competent, and less trusted, precisely the opposite of what any serious effort at governing requires.
Over time it replaces the steady, imperfect work of self-government with a contest of organized passions in which the rules are only as durable as the next mobilization. That path leads not to stronger democracy but to weaker institutions and deeper mutual suspicion.
A Better Way
Reversing this pattern requires treating the neutral application of the law as a public good rather than a partisan betrayal. It means defending officials who follow the rules even when we dislike the outcome, and holding them accountable only when they break those rules or abandon their duties. It means remembering that shared processes, zoning codes, election statutes, and housing mandates are what allow diverse citizens to live together without constant zero-sum conflict.
Reclaiming that standard will not eliminate disagreement. It will, however, preserve the conditions under which disagreement can be resolved without destroying the institutions that make resolution possible.
