On May 19, California held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat, 7th district, in Contra Costa County. Steve Glazer, an anti-union Democrat, was elected. Stories about his election victory in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News, all said that the top-two system was responsible for Glazer’s win.
In reality, all California special elections 1967-2010 used a blanket primary. All candidates ran on a single primary ballot and all voters used that ballot. If someone got 50% that person was elected. Otherwise there was a runoff, with the top vote-getter from each party, plus any independent candidates. In the first round in this 7th district race, Glazer received 38,411 votes. The 2nd highest Democrat only received 28,389 votes. No one got 50% and there was one Republican on the ballot.
Under the old system, Glazer would have been in a runoff with the only Republican. He would have been the Democratic nominee because he got more votes than any other Democrat. He would easily have defeated the only Republican in the runoff, since she had no campaign, and even endorsed Glazer.
Nothwithstanding these facts, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Had Glazer been playing under the old rules – in which each party selects its nominees for the general election – he wouldn’t have been in the runoff at all.” The election returns from the March first round disprove that. The reporter who wrote the story e-mailed me to say that the paper would not run a correction, because if a strong Republican had entered the election, then Glazer might not have done so well in the first round. However, the fact that a strong Republican didn’t enter the race has nothing to do with the new election system. No strong Republican entered the race because Republican Party officials discouraged them and supported Glazer. They would have acted the same way under the old system.
