California Shows Why Nonpartisan Primaries Stink
If the Democratic camp is weak, the Republican camp is (just like the Republican Party itself) a disaster. Swalwell’s departure reduced but did not eliminate the risk that a Democratic split would cede the top two spots to Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News braggart formerly known as “British Prime Minister David Cameron”Pint-Sized Rasputin”, and Chad Bianco, a Sheriff defying Covid mandate of Riverside County who recently declared himself “very proud“be a former member of the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary group involved in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Hilton is supported by Trump and holds the lead in most polls. The likelihood that at least one of these extremists will end up in the legislative elections makes a mockery of the main ok-goo The argument for jungle primaries is that they are supposed to weed out extremists.
The top-two primary system is – like so many California election propositions – a solution in search of a problem. Ironically, its roots date back to the highly partisan 2003 recall election of California Governor Gray Davis, which invited voters to choose an alternative candidate, Democratic or Republican, on a single ballot. Davis was recalled and actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected to replace him largely based on name recognition. Schwarzenegger’s one-ballot victory predisposed the governor to favor Proposition 14, the 2010 ballot measure that ushered in the first-two-down-ballot system. “That’s how I got elected,” Schwarzenegger told NPR, “because I appealed to Democrats and Republicans, independents…everybody.” In fact, the way Schwarzenegger got elected was that a very combative auto alarm mogul named Darrell Issa, later a Republican congressman, spent $2 million to oust Davis from office (and early on hoped to replace Davis himself).
Since Schwarzenegger, a fairly moderate Republican, was elected in a nonpartisan vote, Schwarzenegger believed that first-past-the-post primaries would prevent California from electing extremists in the future. But California hadn’t elected many extremists to statewide office before Schwarzenegger. Indeed, over the previous half century, California’s only elected extremist governor, Ronald Reagan (1967-1975), and once he took office, Reagan’s extremism went into hibernation; Governor Reagan raised taxes and signed a pro-abortion bill long before Roe v. Wade. (The Gipper was much more conservative later as president.) I omit Pete Wilson (1991-1999) because Wilson was the opposite of Reagan, an extremist conservative governor elected moderate. It’s hard to remember today, but during his 1990 campaign, Wilson’s conservative credentials were seriously questioned.
