[EL] Cal. Republican Party always opened its primary for Congress, state office

Sun Jul 8 10:52:59 PDT 2012

Ever since 2001, and through 2010, the California Republican Party always permitted independent voters to vote in its primaries for Congress and state office.  It was only the Republican presidential primary that was closed to independents.

Richard Winger

415-922-9779

PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

--- On Sun, 7/8/12, Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com> wrote:

From: Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com>
Subject: Re: [EL] competitive primaries are common in Calif. leg races when no incumbent
To: "'Rob Richie'" <rr at fairvote.org>, larrylevine at earthlink.net
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Date: Sunday, July 8, 2012, 10:30 AM

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 JohnsonFellowRose Institute of State and Local Governmentm 310-200-2058o 909-621-8159douglas.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. Seehttp://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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