Last Friday at a meeting in Orange County, the Board of Directors of the California Republican Party voted to affirm current party rules that state that you must be registered as a Republican in order to cast a ballot in California’s Presidential Primary this coming February.
As many FR readers know, last February I was elected by CRP delegates in the southern part of California to serve as their regional Vice Chairman on the Party’s Board of Directors. Along with my board colleague, Vice Chairman Tom Del Becarro, we jointly introduced a successful, one sentence resolution opposing any change in our current rules.
My decision to co-author this important statement from our Board came in light of news from National Committeeman Tim Morgan that if this current rule were to change, and non-Republicans were allowed to vote in the Presidential primary, it would likely not cost California any delegates (even though a change at the upcoming September convention would be after the deadline for states to submit their delegate selection process to the RNC).
The reasons for preserving a Republican-only primary are thus:
- The franchise of being a Republican should come with the benefit of playing a role in selecting our nominee.
- The very reason for being a registered Republican dissipates when the franchise to vote in primaries is available to others.
- Presidential campaigns can encourage their non-Republican supporters to join the GOP in order to vote for them.
- Our nominees that we put forth in a general election should reflect the will and opinion of committed Republican voters.
You can be sure that over the long-haul, two things will happen if our primary is "open" — the first is that the trend of voters choosing to register decline-to-state will only grow (why not? If you can vote in any party’s primary, why bother to register with any of them?) and GOP registrations will shrink. Also, our GOP nominees to start to reflect less the ideology of our party and its principles as the influence of many who are not Republican impact who are our nominees.
My co-author, Tom Del Becarro, has penned a column articulating many reasons for why the current system is the best, and you can read that here.
Our Board engaged in a lengthy debate on this subject, with many views being expressed (I invite any CRP Board Member to submit their own statement which I would be pleased to post up on our FR blog – I already received such a statement from Tim Morgan). I think it would be fair to say that a good number of board members who voted against the resolution did so not because they want non-Republicans voting in our primary, but because they either felt that it was premature to consider it given that no actual change to the rules has been submitted, or that more information would be helpful before voting on such a measure.
Still, the prevailing sentiment of the board was that this issue was important enough that passing a strong statement against such a potential change was warranted.
I will say this on a closing note — while I happened to prevail on this particular matter, I was proud of every single member of our board who approached this issue thoughtfully, and deliberatively. Everyone who desired to had an opportunity to make their case, and we clearly did not allow any disagreement on this one issue impact our working relationships and friendships. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.
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