Over a year ago, when then RINO State Senator Abel Maldonado made his deal with the Democrat majority to increase taxes, he obtained as a part of that legislative package the confirmation of an "open primary" ballot initiative. I knew and remarked publicly then that the "open primary" would pass with the voters and become a new reality for political parties in California.
For years, RINO politicians such as Tom Campbell and Brooks Firestone had been pushing for an "open primary." They provided reasons that sounded high minded: an "open primary" would more democratize the process by which we elect political officeholders; it would force political parties to be more "inclusive" of the sentiments of "moderate," "common sense" oriented voters, rather than just the activists on the ends of the political spectrum; it would allow for "moderate" candidates to win in the general elections, thus breaking the ideological logjam in Sacramento. I suspect that their real reasons were much more parochial: men like Campbell, Firestone, and more recently Maldonado, knew that they could not win closed, statewide primaries. Campbell demonstrated that fact yet again in losing his bid for a United States Senate seat in a closed, Republican primary to Carly Fiorina. Maldonado won his primary for Lieutenant Governor, but he had the very great advantage of being the incumbent. In other circumstances, he too likely would have seen his ambitions go down to defeat at the hands of conservative, Republican voters unwilling to support an avowed RINO.
With the anticipated passage of Proposition 14, the RINOS have achieved a tactical victory for their careers; but, even more so, the enemies of real, political debate have won. At the heart of an "open primary" is a disdain for what a former editorialist with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat once castigated as "harsh words" in political contests. Rather than sound the clarion call to their respective partisan activists, either for or against the welfare state, or for or against American cultural exceptionalism, or for or against traditional, social values, politicians now will seek advantage in offering mushy headed pabulum and soft cliches. The contrived, and sometimes insincere, political positioning that we all too often observe in general election campaigns now will appear as early as the "open primaries," thus offering no opportunity for political discourse to rally the troops and to define clearly crux issues of the day.
While people often lament "negative campaigning," I believe in fact that we suffer from too few "harsh words" in our political discourse. There are real fights to be waged, and in fighting them for the good of the Republic we find our mettle as public men. In avoiding these real debates, by handing over actual campaigning from political to marketing men, and by substituting polls for genuine convictions, we have taken the real fight out of politics, thus allowing the theater to be no more than a freak show of sexual morality gossip and smears flashing upon screens in thirty second television spots. There is a reason for the growing discontent among our fellow citizens, which we see in the rise of "Declined to State" registration, the anti-incumbency of the tea party activists, and the declining percentages of people bothering to vote at all. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not because people are overly upset with "negative campaigning;" indeed, as we see in virtually every election, "negative campaigning" very often works, at least in driving down the numbers of the candidate against whom it is directed. Rather, there is discontent because the people understand intuitively that the political theater of their time has been divorced from substantive issues, that few politicians even bother to say anything that has more than a superficial meaning, and that the real fight for the heart and soul of the Republic therefore will need to be waged elsewhere than the ballot box, either on the airwaves, or in the streets, or perhaps with guns. The "open primary" will worsen this disconnect, because it will force out of the political process the last vestiges of strong, partisan debate and activism on substantive issues.
Undoubtedly, this new "open primary" will be litigated - most likely on the legal arguments for the freedom of association and the precedent of recognized political parties being allowed to maintain the integrity of their own nominations. Still, I am not optimistic. Voters in the State of Washington passed a similar "open primary" scheme a few years ago, and the United States Supreme Court has upheld it. In my mind, there is little reason to expect a different outcome this time.
Regardless of what the courts may or may not do, the ultimate solution rests in the same people who decided to pass California Proposition 14. While I am not in agreement with the majority view here, I understand that it is in effect a reaction to the irrelevancy of the political process. As stated, politics has become in recent years more about brand identification and slick marketing than about debating the real issues of the day. Indeed, politics increasingly is about avoiding reality: thus, for example, we have seen hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the past few months within several Republican primary contests, and yet we have heard little about the public pension problem beyond platitudes about "taking on the unions" and "fixing California." In particular, Meg Whitman, who just won the Republican nomination for Governor, offered little more than poll driven sentiments about how she would "fix" our schools, "deal" with out of control spending, and "reform" how politics is done in Sacramento (presumably more along the lines of a successful business model). Who possibly could be against "fixing" education, or "dealing" with out of control spending, or "reforming" Sacramento? The slick, superficial pitch won, as it usually does; but who came away really connected in any real specificity with her program? Who really thinks that their concerns are going to be heard, let alone addressed, if and when she becomes Governor? The same may be said of the average Democrat voter and Jerry Brown. Indeed, the same may be said of a growing number of voters: they feel unheeded, as if politics is just one of a series of entertainments, where their only say is to cheer or to jeer one of the teams of gladiators taking the field on a cable news show. Given the disconnect, it is not surprising that they should lash out at the political parties, even if the result of the "open primary" will be to make politics that much less connected to those visceral issues that really matter. There will be a resurrection of the political party system (and thus an end to this infernal "open primary") only when people once again see political parties as the means by which they hold their officeholders to the fire, thus allowing for that interplay of the people and the politicians which is so very critical to a republican form of governance.
In the meantime, if local political parties are to exercise any influence in this new "open primary" scheme, then they should change their internal bylaws to allow for local caucuses of County Central Committee members, and also other designated party activists, to endorse a candidate of the same party prior to the holding of the "open primary." At least then a candidate could appeal to his fellow partisans with the fact that he had the endorsement of the party, thus perhaps solidifying those voters behind his candidacy and landing him among the top two vote getters. This is admittedly imperfect, since it gives a lot of power to party leaders, who seldom have the means, let alone the interest, in discerning and then representing the real sentiments of tens of thousands of their fellow partisans. Still, the alternative is for political parties to lose the effective powers of endorsement and nomination, thus rendering them meaningless. This may be the intent of the people who voted for California Proposition 14, but in the long run it will not be to their benefit to see the demise of political parties.
