ILLUMINATING POLITICS: DISCLOSE ACT PLUS ‘NASCAR’ MEASURE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“ILLUMINATING POLITICS: DISCLOSE ACT PLUS ‘NASCAR’ MEASURE”

 Give light and the people will find their own way. – Longtime motto of the former Scripps Howard Newspapers.

The essence of that slogan – that voters will act in their own interest if they know enough about an issue or a politician – is at the heart of two measures that might just be California laws less than one year from now.

          One is the so-called “NASCAR Initiative,” which would require all state legislators to wear the emblems or logos of their top 10 campaign donors every time they attend an official function.

          Imagine if that had applied to the ongoing series of primary election debates in both parties this spring: The stage at early contests with as many as a dozen candidates splayed across a series of stages would have looked a lot like the infield at the Indianapolis Speedway or the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, where dozens of race car drivers in fire-resistant jumpsuits are festooned with logos of car companies, breweries, battery makers and many more.

          What logos would some candidates have chosen to represent the industrialist Koch brothers or other large funders of their Super PACs? Would Democrat Bernard Sanders have been the only candidate with a plain business suit? Would donor logos have made attractive accessories for the pantsuits usually worn by candidate Hillary Clinton? They certainly could have made voters better informed, as the words emerging from her mouth and others’ could much more easily have been evaluated in the light of their sponsors.

          No one knows just now, because no polling has been done on it, whether this somewhat whimsical idea pushed by Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox will make the ballot and then pass at the polls. Or, if voters do pass it, whether it would pass constitutional muster. How people dress can be interpreted as a form of speech, which might make this measure a First Amendment violation no matter how popular the idea might become (by late April, it had more than one-fourth the signatures needed to reach the fall ballot).

          So it’s good to have backup. And the newest version of the California “Disclose Act” would provide some of that.

          This measure, first proposed at the end of the last decade by then-Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Ventura County, now a Democratic congresswoman, is less splashy than the NASCAR proposal, but might be more effective because it contains no discernible constitutional issues.

          Known this year as AB 700, the Disclose Act would force all political advertising to clearly and prominently list the top three “true” funders of any ad in large, clear type, one name per line, on a solid black background. This would be the first law in America to finger so-called “dark money,” which is donated to some political action committees and non-profits in ways specifically aiming to keep them anonymous.

          This measure passed the state Assembly on a 60-15 vote, with all Democrats voting in favor, along with nine Republicans. GOP members voting against openness in political financing included the Assembly minority leader, Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley.

          Said Democratic Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles, “Voters deserve transparency in our electoral process. (The Assembly) vote moves us forward in the fight to undo unlimited money in our elections.”

          In fact, passage of the Disclose Act could provide the first true test in many years of whether the old Scripps Howard motto remains valid. If voter preferences were to change as disclosures are made in TV commercials and newspaper ads, that would be a reliable sign of public reaction to new information.

          If both measures should pass, California could end up with the greatest amount of openness in American history. That would be an even better test of whether Scripps Howard, which for generations used a lighthouse as its logo, was correct.

         

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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, visit www.californiafocus.net.

COASTAL COMMISSION EX PARTE BAN NOT ENOUGH

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2016 OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

       “COASTAL COMMISSION EX PARTE BAN NOT ENOUGH”

          There’s a good chance state lawmakers this year will pass a ban on ex parte communications involving members of the Coastal Commission. It’s a nice idea, but inadequate.

Ex parte communications – the legalistic name for private meetings, phone calls and email exchanges between key state officials and the people or companies they regulate – emerged two years ago as one of the most corrupt parts of California’s public life.

          That’s when emails revealed the president of the state’s Public Utilities Commission had met secretly with executives of the Southern California Edison Co. during an industry meeting in Poland. The meeting produced a hotel napkin outline of a $3.3 billion charge to Edison customers, who might get off the hook later this summer for at least some of the expense of closing the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, caused in large part by an Edison blunder.

          Before then, executives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. were already talking and emailing secretly with PUC members and staff about how to ease their costs for the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight and destroyed dozens of homes.

          These were classic examples of ex parte communications, a practice that’s long allowed both sides of disputes before some state regulatory agencies to make their case in private. Reality is that a big advantage always accrues to utilities and other interests with the money to hire full-time advocates paid to develop close ties with regulators.

          Last year, legislators unanimously passed several PUC reform bills including a ban on ex parte communications with commissioners. Gov. Jerry Brown quickly vetoed the measures, which could have harmed the interests of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, parent company of Southern California Gas Co. and the San Diego Gas & Electric Co., where Brown’s sister Kathleen is a highly-paid director.

          The bills Brown vetoed had a narrow focus, homing in on only one state commission. Revelations over the last year made it clear that ex parte communications have also long been a key part of how the state’s Coastal Commission operates. No one knows how much influence consultants meeting privately with commissioners had over the springtime firing of that agency’s strongly environmentalist former executive director.

          Brown, whose coastal appointees approved the firing, has so far said nothing about ex parte communications, or whether he will veto the bill banning them from Coastal Commission operations that easily passed the state Senate. It is carried by Democrat Hannah Beth Jackson, who represents much of the Santa Barbara and Ventura county coastline.

          Jackson’s bill is fine as far as it goes, but it falls far short of what’s needed. Brown’s 2015 veto means ex parte communications are still legal at the PUC, where commissioners lately adopted their own rule against such conversations or emails. But the commission can cancel that rule anytime, and just might when the heat is off.

          Ex parte communications are also allowed at the state Board of Equalization, the Public Employee Relations Board and the California Air Resources Board, where automakers are a constant lobbying presence.

          What’s needed is an across-the-board ban, not piecemeal legislation like last year’s attempted ban at the PUC and this year’s reaction to crises at the Coastal Commission.

          Members of these commissions and boards often whine that they rule on so many cases they’d be swamped if they had to act only on information in submitted documents. They say their talks with parties affected by their rulings give them better, more complete understanding.

          But these officials are often well-paid, the PUC commissioners and many other state board members taking home six-figure salaries. Why shouldn’t they pore over detailed documents, rather than subjecting themselves to the blandishments of lobbyists, consultants and landowners? At the PUC, commissioners also often have private meetings with Wall Street bankers whose investment choices can be affected by state rulings, especially if those bankers know in advance which way a decision will go.

          All of which means the playing field in state government right now tilts toward favoring big money interests. Sure, a ban on ex parte communications by coastal commissioners would be a step in the right direction, but it’s just not enough, not when the same practice is common elsewhere, too.

                  

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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, visit www.californiafocus.net

CALIFORNIA PRIMARY STILL NEEDS A MOVE-UP

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2016 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“CALIFORNIA PRIMARY STILL NEEDS A MOVE-UP”

          Whew! The most actively contested California presidential primary election in decades is over. Candidates Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders were ubiquitous for a month, logging thousands of miles and dozens of rallies. New voters registered by the hundreds of thousands.

But it meant very little in the end because of abysmal timing. Millions of Californians ended up voting in the ninth inconsequential California primary of the last 44 years. All the rhetoric of Sanders and Trump and Clinton was just so much noise because both Trump and Clinton had clinched their nominations long before a single California vote was counted.

          This makes a year when California’s votes actually mean something even more rare than a blue moon: those occur about twice a year when two full moons occur in the same month.

          As things stand, there is no reason to believe the California primary will matter much more for the next 40 years, either, because the early June date comes so late in the presidential selection process. So it’s mandatory that Californians who want to matter start now on pressuring their state legislators to move the vote up, or resign themselves to more primaries that are loud charades like this spring’s.

          California can’t vote first because rules of both major parties forbid any state from holding caucuses ahead of Iowa’s early January date or primaries before New Hampshire’s in early February.

          Justifications for this are mostly financial. Candidates don’t have to raise as much money to compete in small places like the first two states, plus other early stops in South Carolina and Nevada.  No one seriously argues those states are anything like representative of the entire nation, demographically or in any other way. So why should they perpetually be allowed to winnow down the field of candidates?

          That’s what they did this year, as possibilities like former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and onetime California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, among many others, fell by the wayside early on.

          What if California had inserted itself into the process on Feb. 23, the day Nevada Republicans caucused? That was a week before the March 1 so-called Super Tuesday when states voting included Arkansas, Colorado, Tennessee, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Texas.

          Had California moved up, many other states would have chosen the same day or even a date one week earlier, giving candidates very little time to celebrate or recuperate from the Feb. 9 New Hampshire vote.

          What’s wrong with that? Candidates would have had to campaign here long before they actually did. This could have compressed the primary calendar, but by the time February was over, a truly representative sample of America would have voted, and a lot of energy expended (wasted?) since then might have been obviated.

          That’s essentially what happened in a couple of election cycles of the 1990s and 2000s, when California’s vote came early and helped decide things quickly. For sure, Californians’ votes would count more earlier than they have in any June presidential primary since 1972, when Democrat George McGovern took the Democratic nomination by winning here.

          But the current setup is convenient for state politicians, who would face a far earlier filing deadline than this year’s March 9 (a week later for offices whose occupants aren’t running for reelection) if the primary were moved up.

An earlier filing deadline would force decision-making as early as December and accelerate the fund-raising calendar. That’s if California chose not to have two primaries, as it could: an early vote for president and the traditional June date for other offices.

          State lawmakers who have long kept California impotent in presidential selection hide behind the added cost of doing this, about $100 million. But in a state budget of $200 billion, that cost is less than peanuts. Isn’t it worth something to get Californians feeling involved, even inspired? Sanders did that to some extent this spring, even if he was mathematically eliminated long before the polls closed here.

The bottom line: the fact that candidates actually staged rallies all over the state is no excuse to leave things the same.

         

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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, visit www.californiafocus.net

GOP HAS ONLY ITSELF TO BLAME FOR BALLOT ABSENCE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

  

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “GOP HAS ONLY ITSELF TO BLAME FOR BALLOT ABSENCE”

          One clear precedent emerged Tuesday night from California’s primary election results: There will be no Republican contending this fall for the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated by the retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, the first time the race for a statewide office has ever devolved into a one-party affair.

          The reason is clear, too. Not only did the GOP fail to field a truly formidable Senate candidate this year, but the party had only one hopeful among its five (somewhat) significant springtime candidates with any experience in elective office. Keep this up and the GOP will be seeing many more big Democrat-on-Democrat contests.

          By contrast, the Democrats fielded two electoral veterans, two-term state Attorney General Kamala Harris, also a former two-term district attorney of San Francisco, and 10-term Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.

          The returns left little doubt that Republicans could have won a place on the fall ballot if their vote had not been completely fractured. Instead, all five at least somewhat well-known GOP hopefuls stayed in the race to the bitter end (which ended bitterly for them all) even though their party probably could have won a November slot if four of them had dropped out and essentially instructed Republican loyalists to vote for the remaining survivor.

          This actually should have been done before the March 16 filing deadline if the party expected to make a Senate run in the fall. Instead, the last of the GOP candidates to file – Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Unz – waited until that very date before submitting his papers. A party once known for its firm internal discipline had none this year.

          Even when polls repeatedly showed GOP candidates drawing less than 10 percent each among likely primary voters, none dropped out to let Republicans coalesce around someone.

          The reason for all this was as clear as the result: No GOP candidate cared much if their party fielded no autumn candidate. All were apparently content to leave that election strictly to the Democrats, with GOP voters perhaps a moderating influence, as they often have been in all-Democrat races for state legislative jobs. Such one-party races have been common since voters adopted the Top Two primary election system as Proposition 14 in 2010, but until now, never before for a choice top-of-ticket job. It’s bound to leave rank-and-file Republicans frustrated.

          “I doubt this will have long-term ramifications for the party,” said Palo Alto legal arbitrator George (Duf) Sundheim, the leading vote-getter among GOP candidates and one of two former state Republican Party chairmen who insisted on staying in the primary.

          “Yes, it would be helpful to other candidates further down the ballot to have a Republican at the top of the ticket, but with the Top Two primary, we’re simply going to get situations like this from time to time.”

          Not exactly a cry of despair for the party he once headed.

          Said Unz, the author and chief funder of the 1998 Proposition 227, which all but ended bilingual education in California, “The truth is, I probably don’t care whether there’s a Republican candidate in the runoff. I’ve never been anything but a registered Republican, but I’ve been disappointed with the positions many Republicans have been taking lately. And from the other two Republicans in this race, I did not see anything interesting.

          “To win, any Republican would need a lot of crossover voters, but it’s difficult to see two longtime party functionaries managing that.” Unz began by admitting he expected to lose the primary, but wanted the bully pulpit the campaign offered for talking about how to preserve his 1998 Proposition 227, which ended most bilingual education in California.

          The result leaves the field to Harris and Sanchez, with the winner likely to be the one who can attract the most Republicans this fall. Neither came close to dominating the spring campaign, both falling far short of the vital 50 percent benchmark.

         

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. He has covered esoteric votes in eight national political conventions. 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, visit www.californiafocus.net

ANOTHER MANSON FAMILY PAROLE THAT BROWN MUST HALT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “ANOTHER MANSON PAROLE THAT BROWN MUST HALT”

          It seemed like déjà vu last month when a panel of the California Board of Prison Terms recommended parole for onetime Charles Manson “Family” member Leslie Van Houten.

          Other parole board teams have recommended release several times for less well-known former Manson murder participants like Bruce Davis and Charles (Tex) Watson and none has yet been freed.

          But some parole panelists believe Van Houten should be different. Denied parole 19 other times during 46 years in prison, she has been an exemplary inmate, organizing women’s support groups and earning college degrees.

          Parole Commissioner Ali Zarrinnam told Van Houten during a five-hour hearing in Corona earlier this year that her “behavior in prison speaks for itself … 46 years and not a single serious rule violation.”

          Gov. Jerry Brown should pay little or no heed to that kind of sentimental talk as he considers whether to accept or veto the parole recommendation. And most likely, he won’t. When parole officials recommended freedom for fellow Manson Family killer Davis last year, Brown wrote a six-page reversal making this salient point: “In rare circumstances, a murder is so heinous that it provides evidence of current dangerousness by itself. This is such a case.”

          It’s rather doubtful that Van Houten, once a rich family’s daughter and now a gray-haired 66-year-old, would do much damage to society – the usual standard followed in allowing or denying parole – except in this case for its effect on the societal psyche.

          For if murderers can eventually go free after behaving as brutally as Van Houten did in 1969, first holding down victim Rosemary La Bianca in her Hollywood Hills home while fellow killers Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel repeatedly stabbed her, and then adding 14 stabs of her own just for emphasis (later, she said she inflicted ‘about 16 stabs’), what value has society placed on human life? And what effect might that have on others considering brutal killings of their own?

          There was also the matter of Van Houten’s scrawling racist slogans in Mrs. LaBianca’s blood on several interior walls of her home. And there was her carving the word WAR into the stomach of Mrs. LaBianca’s husband Leno, murdered with her.

           

          And yet, there are plenty of lawyers and prison psychiatrists to whom this is largely irrelevant because Van Houten has been a model prisoner, just as was her pal, Susan (Sadie) Atkins, who helped kill actress Sharon Tate and others and died of cancer in prison, where some chaplains bemoaned her incarceration because she was such a “deep and noble” person. None of those Atkins admirers, nor any of the psychiatrists who have evaluated Van Houten, set foot in the crime scene the next day, as this columnist did.

          Nor did any of them see Atkins and Van Houten, with a few other Manson followers, repeatedly enter courtrooms with X’s carved into their foreheads to mark the degree of their support for their guru and each other – and what they had perpetrated.

          Sure, they – like Davis and Watson – have been exemplary convicts. But that did not help Cory LaBianca last year, when her six-year-old granddaughter asked what happened to her great-grandparents.

          Two new factors are at play in this latest parole case. For one thing, Brown has only 30 more months in office and will likely be the last California governor with personal memories of the Tate-LaBianca murders. He lived nearby in the Hollywood Hills at the time and was an elected Los Angeles community college trustee. Will future governors who did not live in the area (no one in the current list of prospects to succeed Brown was either an adult or lived in the vicinity at the time) be more sympathetic to the now-elderly killers?

          Another possible factor is Brown’s push for a fall ballot initiative that would ease paroles of state convicts – possibly including Davis and Van Houten.

          Would he view it as hypocritical to simultaneously push this measure and deny parole to Van Houten, classed as an ideal candidate for freedom by every prison system expert (none of whom was directly exposed to her crimes)?

          One thing for sure: If Brown okays this parole, it will most likely taint his legacy, perhaps even more than the several forms of corruption that now afflict his administration.

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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

EVEN WATERED DOWN, REVOLVING DOOR LIMIT NEEDED

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
   “EVEN WATERED DOWN, REVOLVING DOOR LIMIT NEEDED”

          It seemed almost too good to be true when Republican state Sen. Andy Vidak of Hanford authored a bill aiming to keep many ex-legislators from lobbying their former colleagues in Sacramento for about three years after their departure.

          Even better was the surprising response from majority Democrats: Unlike many proposals from Republicans, this idea did not die an instant death upon coming up in a Senate committee made up of four Democrats and just one Republican. The committee passed the bill out unanimously, once it was watered down.

          But even watered down, this bill still has merit. Here’s why:

          As things now stand, legislators can resign their seats at any time, creating a need for a special election. Fully 58 of these have been conducted over the last 26 years, more than two a year. They have come thicker and faster lately than before: In 2013, Los Angeles County alone had 14 special elections to fill vacancies left by politicians – at a cost of about $15 million. San Bernardino County had 13 special elections, each cost about $1 million.  Some involved city councils and the boards of special districts.

                But some were for high-profile posts in the Legislature vacated by incumbents seeking higher office or leaving for more lucrative jobs than those in the state Senate or Assembly, which pay a paltry $96,250 per year – plus perks like cars and copious staff. About half the special elections involving legislators were about incumbents leaving to take higher-paying jobs – many as lobbyists.

          The most recent case was former Democratic Assemblyman Henry Perea of Fresno, who served five years before taking a lucrative job as a Sacramento lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. That’s the main lobbying arm of drug companies often collectively called Big Pharma.

          Before him, former Democratic state Sen. Michael Rubio of Shafter resigned to take a job with Chevron Corp. and Republican state Sen. Bill Emmerson of Riverside County left to join the California Hospital Assn.

          These men and others who leave their seats at mid-term now must wait only a year to come back and lobby their onetime colleagues. That’s only half the time former U.S. senators are supposed to wait.

          Vidak’s proposal, to be voted on by the full state Senate and possibly the Assembly later this summer, originally aimed to bar lobbying by lawmakers leaving at mid-term until the end of the first legislative session that begins after their departure.

          That gobbledygook can be translated into “two to four years,” since legislative sessions run two years and a legislator resigning only shortly after the start of one would have to wait for two sessions to end before getting down to work. Not many special interests, no matter how deep their pockets, would want to hire a legislator/lobbyist who would be idle that long.

          So Vidak’s measure was watered down, now requiring only a two-year wait, essentially doubling the current hiatus and putting California legislators on equal terms with departing U.S. senators.

          Said Vidak aide Jann Taber, “The chair and other members of the committee were not prepared to support the bill without the amendments.”

          The chair of that committee, the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, is Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat elected with support from business interests. Another committee member is Carol Liu of La Canada-Flintridge, wife of disgraced former Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey. She may have some close knowledge of conflicts of interest.

          Despite being watered down, this bill still ought to be on the list of must-pass legislation because it would lessen at least a bit the motivation for legislators to leave at mid-term and make them slightly less desirable new lobbying hires.

          Sure, that’s not as good as it started off to be, but it’s still a step in the right direction, making this a classic case where the perfect should not serve as an obstacle to the good.

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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, visit www.californiafocus.net

IT’S A MISTAKE FOR STATE DEMS TO FEEL SMUG

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “IT’S A MISTAKE FOR STATE DEMS TO FEEL SMUG”

          There’s a certain smug quality about the California Democratic Party as it heads toward a primary election likely to produce more intra-party runoffs than ever before, possibly ranging right up to the ballot-topping race to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate.

          But just because there may be as many as 30 runoffs pitting Democrat vs. Democrat this fall does not mean all is hunky-dory for this party, which before this spring’s big registration rush to vote for Bernard Sanders for president had gained only about 75,000 registered adherents since 2012, despite California’s significant population increases.

          Yes, Democrats do enjoy a 17-point registration advantage over Republicans, one reason both major parties have considered this state “safe” for Democratic presidential candidates for two decades. But no, Democrats are not justified in crowing about it.

          That’s because mid-May figures from Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla, California’s top election official, demonstrate that typically in recent years, when new voters register, they sign up as “no party preference (NPP),” refusing to identify with either party.

          The rise in NPP registration from 21 percent of the total in 2012 to more than 24 percent today is completely unprecedented and represents an almost total rejection of both parties. Yes, Republicans have actually lost hundreds of thousands of their adherents to the NPP column, far more than Democrats have lost, but Democratic numbers are not growing much despite the party’s expensive and labor-intensive outreach and registration efforts.

          This could have great meaning in the primary, where polls show that in the minds of many likely voters, Hillary Clinton represents the traditional Democratic Party, while rival Sanders has become the latest emblem of change.

          The last time she ran for president – in 2008 – perceptions were similar, but NPP registration was far lower. So Mrs. Clinton won a big plurality in California that spring, enough to keep her going through months of losses to “hope-and-change” symbol Barack Obama in other states.

          This time, California votes almost last, and as usual its vote will have only symbolic meaning. Since NPP voters can cast ballots in Democratic primaries, but not Republican ones, their impact will be felt far greater on the Democratic side.

          Many of those NPP voters are young people only recently eligible to participate – the same kind of voters who gave energy and manpower to Obama’s campaigns. They could create a stark generational split in the Democratic vote.

          The trick for Democrats this fall will be getting those young NPP voters to turn out again in November.

          Academic studies indicate that it’s highly unlikely the new voters would go Republican in the fall, as very few voters switch parties during an election year even if the candidate they liked in the primary has lost. But they might stay home unless Mrs. Clinton can motivate them in a way she has not so far.

          So Democrats appear just as flummoxed by the NPP phenomenon as Republicans. Both parties sometimes react to the reluctance of youths to choose a party by reminding new voters of what happened many years ago.

          Mrs. Clinton, for example, has difficulty comprehending that feminist appeals have not worked well with young women voters, who take for granted the status she helped win for them via her efforts in the 1970s and ‘80s, long before she became a national figure.

          Younger voters, male and female, tell poll takers they are more interested in what they believe a Democrat might do for them in the next few years. This message from youth, both registered Democrats and those with no party preference, is one reason Mrs. Clinton this year has adopted a more strongly liberal tone than ever before. She strongly stresses immigration reform, increased wages and voting rights.

          None of that is likely to change the pattern of new voters steering clear of all political parties. Which means Democrats can’t be smug, any more than the shrinking GOP should be depressed. For the tide moving toward no party preference is not yet fully understood by either party, and if they make wrong moves, the errors could redound for years.

         

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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, visit www.californiafocus.net