The June 10 Roll Call has this analysis of how California’s top-two primary system has increased the power of the Democratic and Republican Party organizations. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The June 10 Roll Call has this analysis of how California’s top-two primary system has increased the power of the Democratic and Republican Party organizations. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Didn’t Pete Stark and Joe Baca have the backing of the Democratic machine?
CA-31 is not a strongly Democratic district. In the primary, most voters voted for one of the two Republican candidates, rather than one of the four Democratic candidates, despite the tendency of more candidates to attract more votes. An incumbent representative does not move into a no-hope district.
The other two examples of Brownley and Lowenthal were not particularly remarkable. They dominated the Deomcratic candidates then won a narrow victory against the Republican candidate.
The increased power has gone not to the party organizations, but to the big-money bankrollers of candidates. Prop 14 overturned one of the basic reforms of 1911, by doing away with party primaries. So the party members no longer choose the nominees who go into the general election. Instead, the top two vote-getters in the primary (not a party primary) go into the general election, and the influence of big-money donors is greatly increased. Instead of working to reach the members of the candidate’s own party in the district, each candidate has the much more expensive task of reaching all voters. So the top two primary, much more than the former party primary, empowers money and disenfranchises smaller parties and even the rank-and-file members of larger parties, who no longer get to choose who goes on the ballot in November next to the party’s name.
Of course party organizations are trying to influence how many people run in the primary – the more who run, the less likely it is that a person from that party will be one of the top two. (Specific cases aside, this is clearly the general rule.) If the parties are at all successful in this, and there are signs that they are having some successes, voters in California will now have less choice than at any time since 1910, when the candidates were simply chosen by the richest activists in each party, each more corrupt than the other. Happy days are here again – for the wealthy.
The 1911 primary was followed by elimination of partisan elections for county offices, and permitting cross-filing, so voters could vote for any candidate regardless of their party affiliation. A 1915 law would have eliminated partisan elections for state officials and the legislature, but was vetoed in a popular referendum.
It wasn’t the reformers who defeated it, but your your wealthy activist friends at Southern Pacific and the Los Angeles Times.