The People’s System of Government Takes It on the Chin

Just when voters’ negativism toward their state government appears to be cooling, the system they put in place has been taking some hard knocks. In the past few weeks, several initiatives have been hobbled or have come under assault in the state Capitol. This has created both opportunities and risks for Sacramento politicians.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state’s blanket-primary law, which allowed voters, regardless of party affiliation, to choose the nominee of any party for any office on the ballot. Proposition 198 passed in 1996, with 60% of the vote. A poll taken in April showed that 72% of Californians now favor an open primary. Nevertheless, the state’s GOP and Democratic Party leadership joined together to challenge the law’s constitutionality; they pushed the case all the way to the Supreme Court, even after two lower courts upheld the law.

The high-court victory could be a Pyrrhic one for state Republicans. Evidence suggests that the blanket primary tended to produce more moderate, marketable GOP nominees. Reinstating the “closed” primary could again empower conservative activists and pull GOP nominees to the right. Pro-choice, moderate Republicans may have a hard time making it to the general-election ballot. That will mean Republicans, certainly those in statewide races, will face an uphill battle to win office.

In addition, the Supreme Court ruling may deny Republicans the opportunity to nurture more Latino officeholders, a strategy key to the party’s political comeback in California. It is no accident that in the 1998 elections, after the first blanket primary, the GOP’s Latino legislative caucus grew from one member to four. In safe Republican districts, particularly, Latino Democrats crossed over to vote for Latino candidates in the GOP primary. In November, as Republicans were losing miserably, GOP Latino legislative candidates were winning.

In the wake of the court decision, state Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon), a potential candidate for secretary of state, offered legislation that would allow political parties to open their own primaries to the state’s nearly 2 million unaffiliated voters. The Republican Party establishment immediately opposed it, while Democratic Party leaders quickly embraced the idea. They have done the political math: Independent voters who help choose the party’s nominees are likely to remain loyal in the fall.

There is also talk of an initiative to establish a “nonpartisan” primary, in which candidates of all parties appear on the ballot and the top two vote-getters, regardless of affiliation, compete in the general election. Think back to cross-filing, which allowed candidates to run in--and win--the primaries of two or more parties without revealing party membership. California employed this Progressive-era reform from 1913 until the mid-1950s. Not infrequently, incumbents with high name recognition and extensive resources captured both major-party nominations, virtually assuring their election in November. Major beneficiaries were Republican officeholders who used their incumbent status to buck increasing Democratic voter majorities.

Could nonpartisan primaries bring back the GOP’s good old days? No. Fifty years ago, Republicans dominated California politics. But today the Democrats hold sway, and term limits have nullified any long-haul advantages of incumbency.

In what many consider an attempt to dilute Proposition 140, the initiative that imposed term limits 10 years ago, the Legislature flirted with putting a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would increase the time lawmakers can serve to 12 years in each house. When antigovernment activists threatened to target amendment supporters, and Latino voters were reminded that the current limits helped produce a threefold increase in Latino representation in the Legislature, lawmakers retreated. Although a similar initiative is circulating for a future ballot, attempts to tamper with the term-limits law appear dead for now.

In 1988, voters passed Proposition 103, an insurance-reform initiative that moved the job of insurance commissioner from the appointive to the elective realm. Last month, elected Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush was forced to resign in the face of investigations that showed misallocation of monies collected from insurance companies in lieu of fees for mishandling Northridge earthquake claims.

Many of the abuses that burned Quackenbush arose from dealings with the very insurance companies the commissioner is charged with regulating and who generously contributed to Quackenbush’s campaign to win the right to regulate them. Moves like that defied voters’ perceptions of how the job should be handled.

A Field poll, taken in mid-June, showed Californians had a negative view of Quackenbush’s job performance and supported his resignation or impeachment; GOP bigwigs, worried about electoral fallout from the scandal, urged him to resign. Now the heat is on Gov. Gray Davis and legislators to play it straight with voters. The appointment of law professor Clark Kelso as interim commissioner was a good first step, giving Davis time to find a qualified replacement. After that, state political leaders can’t shy away from the dicey politics of determining whether an elective commissioner was a wrongheaded decision on the part of voters and needs to be reversed.

In the waning days before summer recess, the Legislature quietly passed a campaign-finance measure that would cap contributions to candidates for legislative and statewide offices and impose new disclosure requirements. The governor signed the bill quickly. Californians will vote on these reforms in November. If they are ratified, the stricter requirements contained in Proposition 208, an initiative passed in 1996 and currently being retried court, would be supplanted.

Some consider the Legislature’s sudden conversion to campaign-finance reform just another end run around voter sentiment. Perhaps. But it’s also a response to the indignation Californians feel over the role of political money in the Quackenbush scandal. In addition, Sacramento legislators, like their Washington compadres, heard the call of campaign reform from Arizona Sen. John McCain’s independent and swing voters during the primaries.

California voters have accrued a mixed scorecard of wins and losses this summer. But what’s most important is that the voting public has joined Sacramento’s political game in a big way. Maybe that’s one reason why there will be only five voter-qualified measures on the November ballot, as opposed to 10 last March.

The state Capitol gang appears to be “getting it.” Savvy Sacramento denizens know timing is all-important in politics, and it is but four months until election day. Just how their response plays out with the electorate this November can affect election results from the presidential contest on down the ballot. As Jesse M. Unruh liked to point out: “Winning isn’t everything, but losing isn’t anything.”