CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“TOP TWO CHANGING RUNOFF VOTES, NOT JUST
PRIMARIES”
When California voters adopted the
“top two” primary election system four years ago via Proposition 14, they meant
to make state politics more moderate, to ease some of the sharp divides between
Republicans and Democrats that led to legislative and budgetary gridlock.
It’s working, but still a work in
progress. For the relatively new system that pits the two leading vote-getters
in each primary against each other the following November regardless of their
party affiliations is now changing some runoff campaigns as profoundly as it
quickly did many primaries.
A classic example comes in the 25th
Congressional District, a solidly Republican area stretching from Simi Valley
in Ventura County through a sliver of the San Fernando Valley and on into Santa
Clarita and the Antelope Valley cities of Palmdale and Lancaster. The seat has
long been held by the retiring Buck McKeon, now chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee.
No Democrat will win this seat, for
the two men who survived the June primary are both Republicans. Former Ventura
County state Sen. Tony Strickland got 29.6 percent of the June 3 vote to 28.4
percent for current state Sen. Stephen Knight of Palmdale. The leading
Democrat, Lee Rogers, netted a mere 22 percent of the primary vote.
Those numbers make it clear that even
if Rogers had reached the November ballot, as he did two years ago, he’d
have been trounced by any Republican opponent. But top-two means Democrats will
have a strong influence on the eventual outcome, anyhow.
This is a classic district where one
party – the GOP in this case – so thoroughly dominates that the minority party
in the district has no chance to win. But Proposition 14 intended that members
of the minority party in such districts should still have a voice – perhaps
even a decisive one.
And in the 25th, where
Strickland and Knight ran about equally well among their GOP cohorts, Democrats
likely will decide things. Strickland and Knight well know this, as signaled by
their appearing at an August forum of an Antelope Valley Democratic club.
Before top two, there’s no way either
of these candidates would have been caught in any roomful of Democrats, nor
would the Democrats have wanted them. But things are different now, and the
eventual winner will know Democratic votes put him over the top.
It’s similar in the 26th
state Senate district in coastal Los Angeles County, where two Democrats are
vying for one seat. How likely would it have been before top two that Ben
Allen, the leading vote-getter in the primary, would trumpet an endorsement
from Don Knabe, a Republican county supervisor. Not very, but the other day he
put out a press release to brag about it.
Allen, a Santa Monica school board
member, ran well ahead of runoff opponent Sandra Fluke in the primary despite
the fact that Fluke has a much higher national profile, the result of her being
gratuitously belittled during a spat over birth control with far-right radio
host Rush Limbaugh. But she has little local political experience and so far
has collected no endorsements from significant Republicans even though GOP
voters will likely decide this race in a mostly-Democratic district.
The scene is much the same in the San
Jose-based 17th Congressional District, where incumbent Democrat
Mike Honda won 48 percent of the primary vote to 28 percent for well-funded
fellow Democrat Ro Khanna. Here, too, Republicans could provide the decisive
votes in a Democratic-dominated area.
After these races and a dozen or so similar
ones, the winners will be well aware that the minority party voters who put
them in office are watching whether they revert to the kind of doctrinaire,
non-compromising partisanship that has plagued American politics for the last
decade or so.
That’s likely to produce at least some
spirit of compromise from the winners, assuming they want to hold their seats.
If it does – and there are indications this happened with some 2012 winners –
it will mean that top two is gradually achieving its purpose of moderating the
politics of both California and the nation.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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