There was a lot of talk about the effect of Proposition 14 in the last election, and its effect on the legislative and congressional elections.  The stated reason for enacting the "top two vote getters" idea for determining who gets to run in the general election was to "moderate" the caucuses, the idea being that if a moderate and an ideologue advance to the general election as the top two vote getters in the primary, the moderate is more likely to be elected, as members of the party whose candidates lost in the primary would be more likely to vote for the moderate of the other party.

While this idea is untested in practice anywhere in the country, interestingly enough, if Prop 14 was in effect in this election, it would not have accomplished its stated goal, at least on the Republican side of things.  Of the 153 Congressional and Legislative elections held in the recent primary, only 10 would have sent two of the same primary to the general election.  There would be 7 Democrat districts with two Democrats running in November, and 3 Republican districts with two Republicans.  The Republican districts would have been Assembly District 25, and Congressional Districts 19 and 42.

Assembly District 25 would only have two Republicans because there was no Democrat at all in the primary.  The two Republicans who would have ended up on the November ballot would have been Kristen Olsen and Bill Conrad.  Neither of these candidates are moderate in any sense of the word.  The same in Congressional District 19, where Jeff Denham would have faced Jim Patterson, or in District 42 where Gary Miller would have faced Phil Liberatore.  All of these candidates campaigned as solid conservatives.  Not a moderate among them.  I don’t know the ideological bent of the Democrats, but many of the districts where the Democrats would have the top two general election candidates were in districts where no Republican at all ran.

When the open primary was in place, it had a little effect on the elections, but that was usually in places where conservatives didn’t strategize ahead of the election to ensure the election of a conservative.  Don’t rely on the courts to eliminate Prop 14 before the next election.  Start working now on strategies to undercut the effect of the initiative. 

The lessons?  If conservatives don’t want Democrats playing around with two Republicans in the general election, they need to work a little harder, but it is not hard to thwart the RINO’s intentions in enacting Prop 14.  Here are some rules

(1)  Do all you can to ensure there is 1 Democrat in the race.  If there is more than one Democrat in the race, it could split the vote and have advance two Republicans to general.  However if there are no Democrats, two Republicans will always go forward.  It is not hard to recruit a sympathetic Democrat.  I did it before under the open primary system, and helped advance Dennis Hollingsworth to the general against a well funded moderate Republican (in that race, we wanted two Democrats to keep Democrats from voting for the moderate in the primary.  I recruited the Democrat, then announced that he was my candidate, and I wanted to take over the Democrat Central Committee.  That made sure activist Democrats voted in their own primary, and not in the Republican primary.  They didn’t want a Haynes spy in their midst.  The strategy worked).

(2)  Be careful about getting too many Conservatives in the race.  Do everything legally and ethically possible to keep the number of conservatives in the race to a minimum.  Hard to do in a free country yes, but there are legal ways to do it.  If you can’t, find candidates who will run as moderates.  Be careful though, not to get too many Republicans in the race.  It is conceivable that if there 8, 9, or 10 Republicans, and only two Democrats, the Republicans could split the vote so severely that the top two vote getters in that Republican district would be Democrats.  Rare, yest, but not impossible.  The Democrats, by the way, have the same problem.

(3) In the next redistricting, if the Democrats want to make sure they have fewer "two Democrat" races, they are going to have to limit the number of 60, 70, or 80 per cent Democrat districts.  There would be fewer two R races in this election, because no Republican district exceeds 60 per cent Republican registration.  There are several districts on the Democrat side, in some cases exceeding 70 per cent.  The more of these types of districts there are the more likely it is to get a two D race.

By and large, the effect to "moderate" the caucuses that the promoters of Prop 14 touted as its "raison d’etre" would not have occurred in this election.  Will it in the future?  Well, if the states in which it is in effect are any indication, no.  But who knows?  California is its own political culture.  My moderate friends are usually brain dead when it comes to political strategy, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  Maybe the moderates will be right this time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.