Washington State’s Attorney General, Rob McKenna, will personally argue in the U.S. Supreme Court on October 1, 2007, when the Court hears the case over whether “top-two” primaries, in conjunction with party labels, are constitutional if political parties object.

It is unusual for State Attorney Generals themselves to argue cases in any court. The writer of this note has been attending U.S. Supreme Court election law hearings since 1971. Only twice has he seen any state Attorney General argue in that court. Louisiana Attorney General Richard Ieyoub, a Democrat, defended Louisiana’s old practice of holding congressional elections in late September or early October. Louisiana lost that case unanimously. Also, Tennessee Attorney General Charles Burson defended Tennessee’s law, prohibiting electioneering within 100 feet of the polls. Tennessee won that case 6-3.

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna is a Republican in his first term. The hearing date, October 1, 2007, will also be his 45th birthday.

See here for an outstanding article that explains the various types of primary used in U.S. history, with a special emphasis on Mississippi. The author, Steve Rankin, has become one of the nation’s leading experts on partisan primary elections.

On August 5, nine candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination debated each other in Des Moines, Iowa. The debate lasted 90 minutes and was broadcast on ABC. Once more, although not every candidate had an equal amount of time, fundamentally each of the nine was able to express himself. With each such successful multi-candidate primary debate, it becomes more and more difficult for the Commission on Presidential Debates to justify limiting its general election debates to only the two major party nominees. Some of the Republican debaters today are at or below 1% in Republican polls, yet their inclusion was valuable.