Ruben “R.J.” Hernandez is on the ballot as a candidate for California Assembly, 77th district, in the northeastern part of the city of San Diego. He has been a registered Democrat for several years. He was the only person who filed in the June 2014 primary to run against Republican incumbent Brian Maienschein. With only two candidates in the race, of course he easily qualified to run again in November, even though he only polled 29.4% of the vote against Maienschein in the primary.
Hernandez has announced that he has changed his registration from “Democratic” to “independent”, sometime in the last month. The Registrar of Voters’ office hasn’t processed the change yet. Although no one can stop him from making this change, California election law dictates that he will still appear on the November ballot as a Democrat. The law does not permit a candidate to have a different partisan label in the November election than the label used in the June primary.
Gee – more *gaming* of the rotted top 2 primary system.
NO primaries.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
He was a registered Republican in San Bernardino County in 20024, and became a Democrat when he registered in San Diego County in 2005.
How does that proposed constitutional amendment doing away with special elections handle this? Is it the affiliation at the time of election, or at the time of filing?
Good question. I don’t know. One of us could read the proposed constitutional amendment on the Cal. legislature’s web page. It is SCA 16.
Does he mean The American Independent Party of California by the use of “Independent” for a
political party?
The appointed replacement must have been a registrant with the party for 12 months prior to the date of appointment.
The proposed amendment says it is the political party preference at the time of election, unless the legislator had declined to disclose a political party preference.
This latter is open to interpretation. Does it mean the party preference at the time a camdidate filed for election, or that which he held at the time of election as a voter.
AFAIK, senate candidate Michael Chamness did not decline to disclose that his political party preference was for the Coffee Party. The word decline implies that Chamness had a free choice in the matter. It does not mean that Debra “Orwell” Bowen could grab the pen and write on his ballot election that Chamness had no party preference, or that she could reject his application as fraudulent if he wrote that his party preference was for the Coffee Party (and this matched his current party preference on his registration.