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

Sun Jul 8 10:30:04 PDT 2012

Correction to "given the fact that such voters already could choose to vote
in a major party primary in the old rules"

Under the old rules, each party had the option to allow independents to vote
in the party's primary. The CA Republican Party usually chose to close its
primary while the Democratic Party usually (but I don't think always) chose
to open it.

- Doug

Douglas Johnson

Fellow

Rose Institute of State and Local Government

m 310-200-2058

o 909-621-8159

douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rob
Richie
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2012 2:15 PM
To: larrylevine at earthlink.net
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] competitive primaries are common in Calif. leg races when
no incumbent

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-associati
on-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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