The interesting saga of Washington state’s legislative race in the 18(1) district continues. See this earlier coverage, which revealed that the Republican incumbent is not running for re-election this year. Six Republicans jumped into the race. Then the Republican Party realized that even though this is a district that usually votes 60% Republican, that large field of Republicans in the primary would be bad for the party’s chances of holding the seat this year.
This is because Washington state uses a top-two system. With only two Democrats running in the primary in this district, and six strong Republicans in the primary, the odds were high that two Democrats would place first and second. Now, two of the Republicans have dropped out, even though the primary is not until August 17. Clearly, Republican Party officials have been working to narrow the field. Of course, this development means fewer choices in the primary for Republicans. See this story about the latest developments. Thanks to Dan Meek for the link.
If all the candidates were strong, I hope they didn’t pick straws with the shortest being the winner.
…and to think California Lt. Gov. Maldonado said “top two” would decrease the influence of “party bosses”.
P.R. and A.V. — NO primaries are needed.
NO body has to drop out.
I can’t wait for Jim Riley to spin some viciously dishonest bullcrap out of this one.
In Louisiana’s 1996 race for the open US Senate seat, there were some six strong Republican candidates; it appeared that they would split the GOP vote and enable two Democrats to make the runoff. At the 11th hour, the state Republican leaders (the “party bosses”) endorsed Woody Jenkins, who made the runoff against the Democrat Mary Landrieu.
Personally, I would rather have such decisions made by voters in a party primary.
Also in recent years, two former Louisiana governors “tested the waters” and finally decided against running again. If the state had had party primaries, they very likely would have run, which would have given the voters more choices.
In the “top two open primary” that Prop. 14 would impose in California, the top two vote-getters would be forced to finance and conduct TWO general election campaigns. In a state as large as California, where big campaign bucks are already required to win, the “top two” would make even more cash necessary.
Mississippi conducts all of its special elections as “top two open primaries.” In 1989, a congressman’s death necessitated a special election in the heavily-Republican US House district on the Gulf Coast. That was then-Sen. Trent Lott’s home district, and he decided to meddle in the race by backing his chief of staff. Lott proceeded to pressure all of the other Republicans– including the late congressman’s widow– out of the race.
The result was that the Democrat Gene Taylor shellacked Lott’s chief of staff, and Taylor has been the congressman ever since.
LD 18 is not as strongly Republican as portrayed. John McCain only received 51% of the vote, and the long-term Republican senator from the district only received 55% of the vote in 2008. The likely reason that the one-term state representative is running for Congress is (1) the Democrat is not running for re-election; and (2) she is an attractive candidate who can pick up some cross-party support and help the Republicans regain the congressional seat. That is, she didn’t get 60% of the vote because she was new, and got 5% less than all the Republicans in the district, but actually ran ahead of the ticket (other than Sam Reed and Rob McKenna) because of her personal appeal.
If it does end up with 4 Republicans, 2 Democrats, and 1 independent, the five “extra” candidates will equal the total number of “extra” candidates in the district since 1992 (51 candidates for 23 races).
3 of the extra candidates were in 1992, when there were two Democratic candidates, including the incumbent, and 3 Republicans. Ultimately, the Democratic incumbent was re-elected. This would have been after redistricting, as the district has slid south towards Vancouver, so the district may have become more attractive to Republicans. At that time the two representative seats were held by Democrats and the senate seat by a Republican (Linda Smith). The Democrat who was re-elected in 1992 was defeated in 1994, so may have been vulnerable in other ways.
1992 was the last time there has been more than one Republican in a race within the district (20 races). There have been 6 new Republicans since 1994, and none have had a primary opponent (Pennington 1994; Zarelli 1995 (special); Meilke 1996; Orcutt 2000; Curtis 2004; Herrera 2008).
In 2000, there was a Reform party candidate, who did receive the 1% support in the primary to advance to the general election, but little more.
In 2002, there were two Democratic candidates in the primary.
So rather than the Top 2 Open Primary resulting in too many candidates it appears that it is attracting additional candidates, and overturning a system where seats were carefully handed off from election to election.
I haven’t read of two Democrat candidates. I did find one candidate’s web site. I didn’t realize he was a Democratic candidate at all from his web site. Perhaps the concern is that the independent candidate will advance to the general election.