The battle lines are drawn. Fleischman says the rule on primary voting (restricting Republican primaries to Republicans alone) is necessary to "maintain a vibrant GOP." Maldanado says it is suicidal. I think it is much ado about nothing.
Tony Quinn, in his column in Fox and Hounds, gives the numbers. The number of independent voters in Republican primaries in less than four percent. Now, I have to admit, I never agree with Quinn’s assessments of what it wrong in the GOP, but numbers don’t lie. Independent primary voters are for the most part irrelevant in either party primary (being about 6 percent of the Democrat voters). That means that restricting them from our primaries won’t be disastrous,and including them won’t make the party any more or less vibrant.
On the whole, if pressed on the question, I would say that Republican primaries are for Republicans. Definitely no Democrats, but I am ambivalent on DTS voters. The reason Republicans are losing voters to DTS status is not because Republicans are too conservative, however, it is because they stand for nothing. The party of small government and less taxes, the party I joined some 22 years ago, proved itself the party of "kinda big" government, big debt, and "we’ll raise your taxes when our spending has pushed us to the brink of bankruptcy." People are rightly disgusted with a party that has no core principles, and rightly leave that party when they think they have been lied to by the party leadership whose sole purpose in politics seems to be maintaining their own political power.
The purpose of the political process is to persuade people to entrust their god-given power in a particular set of leaders. Governing principles are the most common tools used in politics to persuade people to entrust the leaders with power. When someone gains power using those principles, voters expect those to whom they have entrusted power (based on the appeal to those principles) to actually follow the principles they promised they would follow. Republicans violated that trust, and the voters retaliated by turning them out of power in Washington. People have left the party in droves, not because the Party is too conservative, but because the party was exposed to be a party of power and not a party of principle.
Recommit to principle, and work hard to persuade people that the principles we espouse are the principles under which the government would operate best, that is the secret to a strong vibrant GOP. Waffling on principle, having candidates more focused on their personal power than on the governing principles upon which they campaigned, that is suicide. Nobody cares about the rules, nobody cares about whether the candidate is moderate, they care about whether the candidate can persuade them that the candidate has a clear vision about how to govern, and once the political power to govern has been entrusted to that candidate, that the candidate implements that vision. The problem with the California GOP is that it has not communicated a clear, coherent set of governing principles to the voters in a very long time, and that it has not persuaded enough people to entrust enough of its members with political power.
We can fight over rules, we can whine about how "conservative" our candidates are, we can fight over the crumbs of power left on the floor to us by the Democrats, or we can get about to the hard work of formulating a clear coherent set of governing principles, and then persuading voters that those principles are what would be best for them in government. When we have persuaded enough voters that a clear, coherent set of Republican principles are the best governing principles, those voters will entrust Republicans with power, as the voters did in 1994. When Republicans violate that trust, the voters will turn Republicans out of power, as they did in 2006. That is how a Republic ought to work.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Excellent column Ray.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Quinn is correct in that DTS voters are minimal in a GOP primary. More important — those DTS voters who tend to pull a Republican ballot tend to be more conservative than weak registered Republicans. No reason to exclude them.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
If Decline to State voters are an insignificant factor in Republican primaries, then it follows logically that there is no reason to abandon our principles to include them in our primary process.
Ray Haynes has done an excellent job of explaining the need for a more principled Republican Party, but paradoxically, his own column is dedicated to ignoring a key principle: Republicans should be allowed to pick their own candidates. If we are going to ignore that principle for the sake of political expediency, then it is that much more difficult to criticize the Party for ignoring all the other principles. Either principles matter or they don’t. As a minority party, the only thing we have to offer is our principles — and when we abandon them, we have nothing.
Besides, as a former Political Science major, I feel compelled to mention that it is very misleading to say that Decline to State voters comprise only 4 percent of the Republican primary electorate. That statement implies that DTS voters are evenly spread throughout the state, so they are unlikely to make much of a difference. Nothing could be further from the truth! A quick review of the voter rolls shows that DTS voters are not evenly distributed and there is a substantial likelihood that they have had an impact in many different races. This is especially true in the growing number of districts where DTS voters out-number Republicans.
For the survival of our Party, we need to reclaim our right to select our own candidates.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
If Decline to State voters are an insignificant factor in Republican primaries, then it follows logically that there is no reason to abandon our principles to include them in our primary process.
Ray Haynes has done an excellent job of explaining the need for a more principled Republican Party, but paradoxically, his own column is dedicated to ignoring a key principle: Republicans should be allowed to pick their own candidates. If we are going to ignore that principle for the sake of political expediency, then it is that much more difficult to criticize the Party for ignoring all the other principles. Either principles matter or they don’t. As a minority party, the only thing we have to offer is our principles — and when we abandon them, we have nothing.
Besides, as a former Political Science major, I feel compelled to mention that it is very misleading to say that Decline to State voters comprise only 4 percent of the Republican primary electorate. That statement implies that DTS voters are evenly spread throughout the state, so they are unlikely to make much of a difference. Nothing could be further from the truth! A quick review of the voter rolls shows that DTS voters are not evenly distributed and there is a substantial likelihood that they have had an impact in many different races. This is especially true in the growing number of districts where DTS voters out-number Republicans.
For the survival of our Party, we need to reclaim our right to select our own candidates.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Hey Tom,
I actually don’t think that because DTS voters are an insignificant factor in GOP primaries, that it follows logically that there is no reason to keep them. I actually think this is a matter of principle. The limited government principles you use in other arguments.
First, I think it’s important to remember what DTS means. It doesn’t mean that an individual does not consider themselves a Republican, it is that they decline to give the state government their partisan affiliation. To repeat: DTS is not a political party, it merely means that they may be a member of a political party but chose not to let their neighbors know which one. I’d imagine that, as a matter of principle, there are a number of reasons we wouldn’t want government to keep track of our partisan affiliations, any more than we want them to keep track of our gun ownership. In fact, I’d argue that the same rights conservative’s want to preserve by not registering guns, or bullets, are exactly the rights they undermine by letting God and the world know everyone’s partisan affiliation.
OK, so there is a principled argument for you against any sort of partisan affiliation. On the practical level any person who is so motivated to get off their ass and vote in a Republican Primary is probably pretty damn Republican, which is what every poll or voter ID program I’ve ever seen says, and I don’t mind them in the election pool when I’m running a conservative for office.
Please, again, anyone – show me a Republican primary where the numbers actually demonstrate that DTS voters nominated a moderate Republican over a conservative. Im willing to look at numbers and facts, and change my mind if there is real evidence.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The one race I can think of Duane was the 2000 67th Assembly race between Tom Harman and Jim Righeimer. Riggy was clearly more conservative and in tune with the platform than Harman at the time.
August 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Well let’s argue this out, Allan, and I mean ‘argue’ in the discussion sense. I consider both JR and TH friends… but let us look at the race.
I would agree that JR was the more conservative candidate in 2000. My question would be though – how do we know it was DTS voters that put TH over the top? Harman, after all, was a long-standing popular politician in the biggest city in the district, and including outside spending, if I remember correctly, outspent JR. I’m not at all sure it was DTSs that did the trick.
Let me continue… when a considerably more conservative TH (Sacramento will do that to a person!) ran in the special for Senate vs. another friend and another good conservative and narrowly won, it was assumed the Harman campaign won by appealing to Democrat and DTS voters. Incorrect. All the research we did said very few Democrats if any were willing to cross party lines, and that DTS voters who would vote for a Republican were basically Republicans in voting habits, if not conservatives.
Now I will write something which may shock the readers of OC – it’s been several years now but I don’t think the Harman campaign did more than a mailer or two, out of probably several dozen between the two campaigns, to DTS voters and none to Democrats. Why? The bulk of voters were conservative Republicans, or Huntington Beach Republicans, and we were out to win them (and we were winning them pretty good until the last week or two when we couldn’t compete money-wise… damn that Gilliard mail was punishing).
So I go back to wanting data… perhaps from the folks who actually brought the lawsuit?
August 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The Harman-Righeimer race was under the “Jungle” Primary, where any voter could vote in any primary, and had all candidates listed on every primary ballot. I seem to recall that the breakdown was that Righeimer won among Republicans, but that Dems actually voted for Harman in the primary.
Having worked three elections, including two primaries, in San Bernardino County last year, the only parties that permitted DTS voters were the Dems and the American Independent Party.