[EL] competitive primaries are common in Calif. leg races when no incumbent

Sat Jul 7 14:14:47 PDT 2012

Larry and Richard both make good points. This was an example of Top Two NOT
making a difference. It's also agood example of how much it is a "crapshoot
primary," as Steve Hill has been calling it.

First, to be clear Top Two is only different from  the old system when two
candidates of the same party advance to the November ballot -- given the
incredibly low turnout of unaffiliated voters in most Top Two races this
year, given the fact that such voters already could choose to vote in a
major party primary in the old rules and given that fact that partisans
overwhelmingly would vote for someone one of their party if a candidate
runs,

But ue to the vagaries of split votes on the Democratic side and 20% of
voters backing the one Republican in the race, that didn't happen here.
With relatively paltry turnout (far less than half of what it will be in
November), this district's representation has already been determined for
the next two years. Democratic candidate Nazarian now will coast -- even
though a shift of a relative handful of votes toward the third-place
Democrat from Democratic candidates placing 4th through 7th, and it would
have been a whole different contest.

Independent expenditure spenders certainly knew about this dynamic. They
threw HUGE sums of money into this race. including tactical money trying to
affect who finished second The Teachers Union spent $400,000 against the
Democrat Johnson who narrowly finished in third, with pro-charter school
forces spending three that much on his behalf. See
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/news/2012/06/18/6669/california-teachers-association-backs-nazarian-val/

Furthermore, if you look just at the Democratic votes only and recaluate
their percenates, you get:

Adrin Nazarian  - 34.5%
Brian Johnson - 25.0%
Andrew Lachman - 24.2%
Lauretee Healy - 13.5%
Adriana Lacarols - 3.0%

Lachman was more aligned with Nazarian, so he's a legitimate nominee, but
still it shows split votes and spoilers are an ongoing problem with the
system. Backers of ranked choice voting (instant runoff) like me would
suggest that you at least use it to reduce the field to two so you don't
have vote-splitting affect who gets to advance- - -and better yet, be
daring and reduce the field to three or four and then use RCV again in
November to give voters real contests when so many more of them are at the
polls.

By the way, it will be interesting to see if Justice Stephen Breyer
develops an opinion of Top Ttwo based on the fact that his son has
qualified for the November ballot in Assembly District 19. Phil Ting won
more than 50% of the overall votes, with Michael Breyer back at 22%, but
the two Democrats both advance, with the Republican out of the running with
17%.

- Rob Richie

##########
On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 1:29 AM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net>wrote:

> There were not just two Democrats in the AD 46 Primary; there were five. I
> live in the district; my office is in the district. As a political
> consultant, I observed this race very closely. I knew some of the
> candidates personally, knew their consultants, and knew some of the people
> involved in the independent expenditures. I think in the old traditional
> closed Democratic Primary system we would have had the same winner. It
> wouldn’t have mattered who was the second place finishing Democrat but the
> likelihood is it would have been close between the actual third and fourth
> place finishers, who would have been the second and third place finishers
> in a closed Dem primary. This Primary is not a very good example of
> anything because there were too many influencing circumstances. ****
>
> Larry****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:
> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] *On Behalf Of *Richard
> Winger
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 05, 2012 9:54 PM
> *To:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* [EL] competitive primaries are common in Calif. leg races when
> no incumbent****
>
> ** **
>
> Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog tonight talks about how close the primary
> between two Democrats was, in the Assembly (lower house of the Cal.
> legislature), 46th district in which Rick happens to live.  But there was
> no incumbent.  It is not rare in California, or in the U.S. generally, to
> have a competitive primary for a congressional or legislative seat when
> there is no incumbent.
>
> It seems to me, even if there were no Prop. 14 top-two open primary in
> California, the race in that district's Democratic primary would have been
> close, given no incumbent.  Perhaps the same two Democrats would have run
> in the old partisan system.
>
> In 2010 in California, under the old partisan system, there were some very
> close legislative primaries.  For Democrats, just for the Assembly, there
> were close races in these districts:  3, 7, 9, 20, 21.  For Republicans,
> there were close races in these Assembly districts:  25, 59,70.
>
> Also in 2010, the Democratic primary for State Senate, 40th district, saw
> these results:  Juan Vargas 24,282 votes; Mary Salas 24,260 votes, a
> difference of only 22 votes.
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147****
>
> ** **
>
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> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>

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