J. C. Kantorowicz, a Montana Republican Party official, has this op-ed in the Great Falls Tribune, in defense of the party’s action in trying to get a closed primary for itself for public office. This op-ed is different from other recent Republican opinion pieces in Montana. It mentions the interesting incident when a former Green, Bob Kelleher, captured the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008.
The writer didn’t say much. In 2008 Republicans were saying support our candidates until someone wanted a Bob Kelleher sign. McCain and Kelleher agreed on many issues, including more regs on guns. Max was a good candidate and Republicans were going to have a hard time defeating the long time Senator. In the end it didn’t matter. Tax payers end up paying around 500,000 dollars for a state wide primary. Why should Republicans close their primary but still take our money. End the primary system.
I’m glad to see people starting to say primaries are a bad idea. Professor Arendt Lijphart said the same thing in a recently published political science book, but generally that opinion just isn’t expressed in the U.S.
In June 2008, most voters voted in the Democratic primary. There was a presidential primary for both parties, but the Republicans had used caucuses to choose their national delegates. This made the Republican presidential primary between McCain and Paul a beauty contest. There were 182K voters in the Democratic presidential primary vs. 96K in the GOP primary. But turnout dropped off for the Republican Senate primary to 74K, and rebounded to 90K for the unopposed Denny Rehberg. That is, 18% of voters chose none of the five candidates compared to how many voted when they had only one choice.
This suggests a lackluster field, rather than sneaky devil Democrats voting in the Republican primary.