In a few weeks the members of the California Republican Party Central Committee will gather in Riverside County for our semi-annual convention. At that convention, delegates will consider a change that I have proposed in the state party’s bylaws that, if passed, would establish that only registered Republicans may cast ballot in the primary to determine who will be our party’s nominee in all partisan general elections match ups.
When I tell people about this proposal, most people respond in disbelief, not having understood that currently millions of California voters who choose not to register as a Republican have the ability to cast a ballot in the GOP primary. As one said to me just yesterday, “That doesn’t make any sense – it’s our Republican Party primary, where Republicans select the nominee to go up against the Democrat in November, right?”
As it currently stands, Decline To State (or independent) voters may request a Republican ballot, and vote in GOP primaries. For some time now, only the GOP Presidential primary has been open only to Republican voters – as the Republican National Committee rules prevent the seating of any delegates chosen through a process that includes non-Republican voters – a good policy in my opinion.
**There is more – click the link**
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Why not just draw straws at the country club and save us the drama….
The obvious dangers of open primaries are a rich guy or gal could buy the nomination or a colored shirt group puts up a whack job using massive economic clout……
Carley…Huffington…..Whitman..Simon…Poizner….Arnold…Mr. or Ms. average whoever goes to Sacramento or D.C. is DEAD in Republican politics.
The modern Republican template to compete: celebrity and/or money….
Sad….really sad…can’t you find a competent politican for only a dime?
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Well done Jon; I predict your rules change will win at the upcoming convention. As you slam the door on potential voters for our candidates the party will continue to diminish until Republicans become completely irrelevant. And then, Jon, where will you hide? How will you protect your fortune when the Democrats have a veto proof legislature?
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Pat Brown used to say that the Democratic Party is like a big house – with a left wing, a right wing and room for everybody.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
If you think allowing DTS’s to vote in R primaries, all you have to do is look at the state of Washington, to see what happens when open primaries are mandatory, party ID is forbidden, and all voters must vote by mail. I’m weary of the mugwump’s of our party grumbling about the rest of us. Keep the R in Republican.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
John you make some interesting, valid points worthy of discussion. Unfortunately you made to many of them. I just don’t know where to start.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The idea should not be excluding voters from our primaries, it should be making an inclusive and welcoming political party to those who share a majority of our political party’s ideas.
Demographics have changed, playing with the old playbook does not cut it. Decline to State voters particularly in the bay area are mainly ex-Republicans because they find our sharp turn to the right regressive. We need to find out why these voters left our party and go from there.
John Burton is probably laughing at this proposal dreaming of a Massachusetts lopsided legislature where the Republican caucus could fit in 1 SUV.
We need to recognize the new demographics of our state, and realize we need a welcoming political party. We do not have as many white voters as when Reagan was governor and president. Ditch the wedge issues, and focus on the bread and butter of creating jobs, business friendly regulation and law and order.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
We are a welcoming party. Anyone qualified to vote in California can join the Republican Party. The point of Jon’s by-law change is really simple – it allows Republicans to pick Republican candidates. What a concept.
Jon will have my vote at the convention.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Bob, how are we “slamming the door on potential voters” with this change? Anybody who freely decides to affiliate with the Republican Party by checking the appropriate box on their voter registration form can vote in our primary.
Matt, this is not about “demographics” or “white voters” or “wedge issues”. This is about Republican voters in CA being able to choose their own party’s nominees. If “Decline to State voters particularly in the bay area” wish to have a voice in who our party’s nominees are then all they need to do is re-register as Republicans.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
I am a registered Dem so this is not directly my concern, but I would point out that we are supposed to vote for individuals, not parties and the only reason political parties were created (with much trepidation by our founders) was to ensure that there was some kind of an ongoing structure in opposition to the powers that be so that opponents of the status quo could compete fairly with the inherent powers of incumbents. Our founding fathers envisioned a system where our most competitive elections were at the local levels with neighbors talking to neighbors about the issues that concerned them and people making a judgement about politicians that they really knew and whose values they understood. Instead we are evolving into a system of parties where everyone votes by ideology and voters are primarily interested in candidates at the top of the ticket whom they can’t really judge fairly and issues that they don’t really understand. We are turning it all upside down and I don’t think that’s good for America.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Political parties are extremely unpopular in California and nothing is more fashionable than a silly statement like “I vote for the candidate, not the Party.” The people who say that sort of thing are normally completely ignorant about how things get done in the Capitol — and they have no idea that their individual candidate’s personal views are normally irrelevant. The Legislature is organized along party lines and it always has been, so it matters a great deal which party he or she belongs to. It matters more than anything else.
The reality is that political parties serve a very important public purpose. They organize voters, candidates, and officeholders along ideological lines. They organize people for a common purpose and work to get it accomplished. Of course, special interest groups do the same thing, but they don’t do it for altruistic and patriotic reasons. When we weaken the parties, we empower the special interests.
For that reason, and many others, it makes sense to have closed primaries, where party members choose their own candidates. In our system, that is one of the only checks-and-balances that can potentially keep the special interests from running our Legislature.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Help me here: Are these the same DTS voters we want them to vote Republican in the general election?
Bear in mind: The DTS voters are becoming the fastest group of registered voters here in California, especially in the San Gabriel Valley where minority voters (Asians and Hispanics) do not want to align with either a Democrat or a Republican, but decide to become a DTS voter.
How can we get those DTS voters to become a Republican is a huge challenge and it is not easy.
As a CRP Delegate, I will be asking good questions and I expect my fellow delegates to have a respectful dialogue on the topic.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Decline to State (DTS) voters have minimal impact in a Republican Primary. Generally in a given seat we are talking 3-5% on the high end. Having polled these DTS voters who vote in GOP primaries over the years I can write with accuracy that these DTS voters are fairly conservative – in fact most are GOP ticket voters or “closet” Republicans.
Maybe someone else can actually demonstrate the theory that left of center DTS voters ‘crossed over’ to elect more moderate Republicans in the earlier Open Primary? That might make me change my mind… but I’ve run a few moderate GOP candidates over the years and simply never saw it materialize.
Anyone have numbers?
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
It seems logical that people will likely vote for the same guy in the general that they did in the primary. By giving DTS that opportunity with GOP candidates. This seems like it would make campaigns jobs easier to mobilize that base with name recognition, rather that to bring people over who were not given a chance to be sold on that candidate in the primary.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
There was a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times where former congressman Mickey Edwards compared the way people in Washington are toeing the party line with how often they used to and making my basic point which was it’s bad for the country.
Although the ideological fights seem to get most of the press attention, what legislators generally do is technically driven and requires not only specialized knowledge, but also the courage of a legislator to follow his own conscience in bringing issues to the attention of his fellow members (everything is decided by majority vote after all).
I also think if you study votes, you will find 90% of everything is unanimous on both sides of the aisle and until ten years ago or so, when there was a split of more than a few members, you were as likely to find an issue that divided both caucuses as you were to find an issue that split Republicans and Democrats. That’s changing and I don’t think it’s good.
Caucuses also had a major say in terms of what reached the floor, but until about 1985, I don’t think there was ever a situation where an individual member had strong feelings on an issue that he wasn’t able to get an up or down vote by the entire body. It was just a courtesy extended on both sides.
Party loyalty has always played a role in Sacramento and Washington, but it has grown not only beyond what the founders envisioned, but also to the point where it is wrecking both our state and country. That has to change.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
I just got an email disagreeing with me on this issue and after going through that back and forth, I thought I would write a little more about what has changed and how I think that has hurt California.
Mr. Hudson repeated the common belief about parties being necessary for people with common beliefs to band together to accomplish anything and essentially argued that made it easier for voters to hold them accountable. I think he is wrong and I also don’t think that’s the way it was until very recently in Sacramento. It was more that way in Washington, but even then not as much as the media makes it seem.
First, most people know that virtually every leadership election in both houses has involved alliances across party lines. Look at the history books. I think that speaks for itself on how much behind the scenes went on across party lines.
But what many people don’t know was that up until the early 90’s, Republicans and Democrats were close enough friends that they often shared apartments and condo’s in Sacramento. In 1982, five Democratic legislators shared apartments with Republican members. They were friends and didn’t have a problem admitting it. In fact, up until the late 80’s,virtually every member of both parties at some point went on a family trip with a member of the other party. It was just the way things were done and that’s of course changed.
As a personal example, I can still remember someone being surprised when a local paper covered the fact in the 70’s that Newt Russell took a two week vacation with Bob Morretti the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly and I asked Russell about it when he spoke to a government class at our school. He said that although they disagreed on a lot of things philosohically, there were also a lot of areas they agreed on and it was better for California that they kept up a regular contact to discuss issues to see where they could work together, instead of viewing themselves as competitors.
I think that was right and through the years, everything I have seen or heard about that would qualify as a significant accomplishment started out with members of opposite parties working together before they went to their caucuses.
For example, the Charter School movement which is just now coming to fruiting grew out of work by State Senator Gary Hart and his close friend Senator Ed Davis (with his chief of staff Tom McClintock) where they were trying to reform the school funding mechanism. From that, they got together on things like teacher competency testing and other education issues that they saw the same way. Hart could never support vouchers, but he knew there needed to be alternatives for parents and that is where the whole charter idea started.
Protecting the California Coast grew out of legislation put together by Ken Cory and Henry Waxman along with Republican Alphonso Bell that was opposed by a lot of the leadership in both parties (Many Dems in those days being more concerned about jobs).
Stopping forced bussing was almost entirely Alan Robbins. If you believe the history books, funding California’s university system started off as a deal between several legislators of both parties and Jess Unruh first made his mark by going against his parties leadership and lining up Republican votes (against the wishes of their leaders) to get the money for UCLA to be transformed into a world class university instead of the auxiliary campus to Berkely it was at the time.
My point is that if you look at most of the accomplishments of the California legislature through the years, you will find that not only were they helped by bipartisan coalitions, but that they started outside of leadership with members going across party lines first. That is what I think is being lost by this hyperpartisan atmosphere in Sacramento (and in Washington) and I don’t think it has ever been this bad.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Jon,
I’ve become torn on this issue. I used to be really strongly in favor of a closed primary for Republicans only. I have to admit, after last year seeing all the independents, DTS, and young people flocking to Ron Paul’s message of liberty and strict adherence to the US Constitution, I am now torn. I want people who left our
party because we have not been following our stated principles to be able to cast a ballot for candidates like a McClintock or Ron Paul in the future. I’m convinced most of the party hierarchy(not you of course) and elected officials are not committed to our platform. Just look at what happened last week when McConnell & Cornyn were out here and said that the only reason we lost in 06 and 08 was because of GWB’s unpopularity and ditto for the Iraq War. So by our leaders not sending a message and/or a signal to the people that left the party that we understand why we lost our way, I’m afraid we will never get these people back in the party. So we might as well allow them the chance to cast a ballot for Republicans that still understand what it means and use to mean to be a Republican.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Jon,
I think you are absolutely correct. Isn’t it just common sense that ONLY members of an organization should be allowed to vote for that organization’s leadership?
If you’re not interested enough in, say, the local Kiwanis club, to JOIN and participate in it, why would anyone think that it was in any way reasonable for you to have a vote in who leads that club?
Yes, we need to entice DTS voters to join the Republican Party, but we should show them that one of the rewards of joining us is that THEN they will have a say in our party platform and who we put forward as our candidates in the General Elections. As a DTS voter, they have no voice in any party.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Give me one good reason to join the Caifornia Republican Party after you gave big bucks to pass Prop. 1A.
August 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am
There is a difference between the local Kiwanis and a political party: the Kiwanis does not make decisions that impact the population as a whole.
I think it is in the best interests of the GOP to welcome potential November voters by allowing DTS voters the choice of voting in the GOP primary.
Political parties are not fraternities (at least they are not supposed to be), they should be about winning elections.
August 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am
“There is a difference between the local Kiwanis and a political party: the Kiwanis does not make decisions that impact the population as a whole.”
All the more reason that you should want people making these decisions who are concerned and knowledgeable; best demonstrated by their active INVOLVEMENT in the political process.
Otherwise you leave open the door to mischief (voting for the person whom you think most likely to lose in the General Election) or ignorant and swayed by the onslaught of misleading and often mendacious radio and television advertisements so prevalent today.
Requiring membership in a political party in order to be able to cast a vote to select that party’s nominee may not be a perfect situation, but it seems obvious to me that it is the best solution anyone has put forward thus far.
By the way, what evidence do you have that allowing DTS voters to vote in the GOP primary would have ANY effect on whether said DTS’ers would then vote for the GOP nominee in the General Election?
August 30th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The only evidence I have is the relatively flat vote levels for Republican candidates as a rule since 1996.
As far as I have been able to determine, elections in California are driven by the intensity of the Democratic voter, including 1994. Republican numbers are relatively flat going back to 1994.
Republicans cannot win without the DTS’s.