Every election year, California has 100 legislative seats up for election (all 80 Assembly seats, and half of the 40 State Senate seats). In 2018, only 95 Republicans filed to be on the primary ballot to run for a legislative seat.
By contrast, in 1992, there were 217 Republicans who filed to be on the primary ballot for those 100 seats.
There will probably be some more Republicans who file as declared write-in candidates this year. The deadline for that is May 22.
Who will be the last above ground Elephant in the CA soviet socialist republic — CASSOR ???
— leaving the Donkeys to eat each other.
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PR and AppV
In 1992, you were just beginning to see the effect of term limits. Since service prior to 1990 did not count, there were no legislators who were being forced out, but there were legislators who were reviewing their career. Someone who had served for 10 terms before term limits might decide to keep running while they were healthy. But if you had served 10 terms, were 67, you might consider whether you really wanted those last two terms that you were eligible for. Because of this there was not a sharp cut off in 1996 where almost all the districts came open. Quite quickly, there were about the same number of seats open every election.
24 of 80 Assembly seats were open in 1992, almost 1/3. You also had a pent-up demand, as ambitious candidates had been blocked by long-term incumbents. 1992, would also have seen the effect of redistricting. Even if the new map is an incumbent-protection map, not all can be protected equally. It is a lot easier to do if the map-drawers know who won’t be running for re-election. In an area that is losing representation, you can add little pieces of the district being vacated to the neighboring districts, minimizing the change to any one of them. And you might create an entirely new district elsewhere.
The 80 Assembly seats had 190 Republican candidates, or 2.38 Republicans per district.
But if we divide these into open seats, and incumbent seats, there were 102 Republicans in 24 open seats, or 4.25 per district, and 88 Republicans in 56 incumbent seats, or 1.57 per district. That is 2.70 times as many Republicans ran if the seat were open.
If we look at the 13 open seats where a Republican was elected, there were 77 Republican candidates, or 5.92 Republicans per district. In the 11 open seats where a Republican was defeated, there were 25 Republican candidates or 2.27 per district.
There were two other open districts where a Republican had a credible change. Adding in those, there were 15 open districts, where a Republican could have won, and did win in 13 of them, with 89 candidates, or 5.93 per district. In the other 9 open districts where there was no credible chance for a Republican to win, there were 13 candidates, or 1.44 per district.
Summary:
Open, Republican win or credible chance: 89/15 = 5.93 R’s per race.
Open, no hope Republican: 13/9 = 1.44
Republican incumbent: 31/20 = 1.55
Democrat incumbent: 57/36 = 1.58
47% of Republicans were concentrated in 19% of the districts.
In 1994, there were 130 Republican assembly candidates, a decline of 32% from 1994. As in 1992, they were concentrated in open seats won by Republicans.
Open, Republican win: 52/14 (52 candidates in 14 seats) = 3.71 R’s per race.
Open, Republican credible chance (40%+ in general): 9/4 = 2.25
Open, no hope Republican: 8/7 = 1.14
Republican incumbent: 24/22 = 1.09
Democrat incumbent, Republican win: 9/5 = 1.80
Democrat incumbent, re-elected: 28/28 = 1.00
40% of Republicans were concentrated in 18% of the races.
An open seat where the Republican nominee is practically assured of victory draws a lot of candidates. In Republican-leaning areas, there are lots of successful and ambitious city council members, county supervisors, and school board members who might be interested in moving up the food chain. Even though these are nonpartisan offices, they might choose to be Republicans when they seek partisan office, and the party will recruit those who demonstrate elect-ability based on good looks, good speaking ability, leadership, etc. When there is no hope for a Republican candidate, there will be few interested in running. If you have $1000 to spend on hopeless causes, you are better off going to Las Vegas and playing the slots. Nobody is going to stop you from filing, and you may curry favor from the party by filling out the slate.
Similarly, few will challenge a Republican running for re-election. He is an incumbent for a reason – he won election in the same district two years earlier. If the district has not changed, and the incumbent has not changed, why try to overturn him.
Over all the number was down. This is likely due to three factors. (1) Redistricting took effect in 1992. This upset the status quo. Incumbents were not running in the same district. (2) Term limits first had an effect in 1992, not directly, but indirectly, as long-term incumbents decided not to use up their last three terms. Pent-up demand had been released. By 1994, there may have been more opportunity to prepare for an open seat. If A, B, and C look to be formidable opponents, with sizable war chests, do I want to throw my hat into the ring? Perhaps not, if it is going to be stomped on. (3) Elections were becoming more professionalized/commercialized. Campaign finance “reform” had resulted in businesses that were good at gathering contributions. They might contact 500 individuals to give money. If 100 gave $1000, that is $100,000 to spend on the campaign. And they would know who to hit up for other campaigns. Contribution-raising is a full-time business. Running television/radio ads is expensive in California, as in most areas you will be buying ads that will reach millions of persons who can not vote for you. With huge districts of 100s of thousands of voters it is impossible to go door-to-door. Campaign mailers may be treated like junk mail. Less and less could a campaign be run from a kitchen table, where the candidate jumps in the family sedan to travel to Rotary Club meetings and newspaper editorial board meetings.
California is fast-verging upon single-party status. The combination of a dominant party plus top-two voting is destroying democracy in this state.
Hmmm-
Top 2 future
— mere 99.99 pct commies vs 100.00 pct commies in the CA soviet socialist republic — CASSOR ???