CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2018 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FEINSTEIN’S RACE REVEALS A MAJOR TOP TWO PROBLEM”
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2018 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FEINSTEIN’S RACE REVEALS A MAJOR TOP TWO PROBLEM”
Ever since the 2010 passage of
Proposition 14, Libertarians and members of other small but sometimes
significant California political parties have griped about the lack of choices
presented to voters in the state’s biennial November general elections.
Advocates of the “Top Two” primary election
system set up by that eight-year-old initiative respond that it actually does
provide runoff election choices, even if they’re often between different wings
of the same political party.
Voters had just such a choice this
fall in the contest between longtime incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein and former state Senate President Kevin de Leon. Feinstein
represented moderate Democrats, de Leon the party’s more extreme leftist Young
Turks.
This race ended up tossing a monkey
wrench into Top Two, the first time the system has not worked as planned.
Top Two, known to some as the “jungle
primary,” puts the two leading vote-getters in California primaries into the
finals, regardless of political party. The major parties despise this system because
it cuts their organizational influence, as it did last spring when the state’s
Democratic Party apparatus leaned to de Leon, but 70 percent of Democratic
primary voters went instead for Feinstein.
Top Two supporters enjoyed the fact
that their rules reduced party influence. They don’t mind that dozens of
district elections for Congress and the Legislature have been one-party affairs
since 2010, some involving two Democrats and others matching two Republicans,
depending on which major party was dominant in any particular district.
They have rejoiced in the fact that
voters of the minority party, whose smaller numbers previously gave them little
or no voice in district elections and a few statewide races, could moderate the
way their representatives behaved once in office in Sacramento and Washington,
D.C.
But then came the U.S. Supreme Court
confirmation hearings for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, where Feinstein played a
key role in getting #MeToo movement-style complaints about Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual
misbehavior as a young man before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she is
the ranking Democrat.
Feinstein’s role infuriated many
Republicans, who saw the claims about Kavanaugh as trumped-up falsehoods.
Rather than going for the more
moderate Feinstein, who beat de Leon by a margin of more than 3-1 in the
primary, Republicans by a margin of about 2-1 voted for de Leon. This was a
real head-scratcher, as de Leon during the campaign often blasted Feinstein for
her friendliness with some Republicans. De Leon is also the prime author of
California’s “sanctuary state” law and his stances on everything from health
care to climate change run diametrically counter to standard GOP positions.
Still, many Republicans came to detest
Feinstein last fall, and decided to vote for anyone over her. De Leon became
their only possible fallback, allowing him to improve greatly on his primary
performance, only losing by an eventual margin of about 9 percent.
Their sentiments were expressed by the
editor of one small Central Valley newspaper, who wrote in his pre-election
endorsements column, where he also blasted Democrats for their “often stupid
ideas”: “Vote for Kevin de Leon. Incumbent Dianne Feinstein embarrassed herself
and California by carrying the water on the phony and vicious campaign
against…Kavanaugh. Her days in the Senate should be brought to a close.”
That did not happen, but GOP voters
became strange bedfellows for the Democratic left and gave Feinstein some anxious
moments.
Had de Leon won, he would have voted consistently
for six years against almost everything favored by the Republican voters who so
avidly helped him out.
That’s not how former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
and his fellow Republican sidekick, ex-Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, planned it when
they helped create Top Two. Under their predicted scenario, the
ultra-conservative voters who backed de Leon this fall were supposed to vote
for the more moderate Feinstein.
If they were being rational, they
would have done that. But they were governed by emotion, as many voters often
are. So GOP-dominated counties like Shasta, Butte, Madera and Merced went big
for de Leon.
If more monkey wrenches like this ever
get tossed into Top Two, there’s a chance the same voters who opted into it will
someday opt out.
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
