Ballot Plan Would Bypass Parties

Four years after the Supreme Court struck down California’s open primary, voters could soon get another chance to overhaul state elections with a new free-for-all ballot.

The proposal, nearing qualification for a November vote, has vexed top Democrats and Republicans alike. Voters, regardless of party registration, would be able to pick any candidate in a primary. The candidates who finished first and second would then compete in a general-election runoff -- even if both belonged to the same party.

The new system would cover races for U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, the state Legislature and seven statewide offices: governor, attorney general, treasurer, controller, lieutenant governor, insurance commissioner and secretary of state.

Backers say the change would favor the election of moderates and curb the influence of ideologues, especially in the polarized Legislature, where discord between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans has stymied solutions to the fiscal crisis.

“Too often, we’re stuck with partisan gridlock in the capital, and that’s something we should all be working to change,” said state Controller Steve Westly, a Democrat who is one of four co-chairmen of the initiative campaign. One of the other three is state Education Secretary Richard Riordan, a Republican.

Supporters also say the proposal would increase voter turnout by spurring competition in otherwise lackluster November races.

But the major state parties and top lawmakers fiercely oppose the measure. Among their biggest fears: runoffs that lock out one party by pitting two members of another party against each other.

“I don’t think that’s good for democracy,” said state GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim, who has joined forces with his Democratic counterpart, Art Torres, to fight the proposal.

Opponents say the proposal would also hinder minor-party candidates -- who would have trouble making the final cut -- and magnify the influence of big donors by adding the expense of runoff campaigns in scores of districts where winning a primary is tantamount to victory. They say it would also encourage major-party leaders to strong-arm candidates out of primary races for fear that a split vote would deny the party a spot in the runoff.

Historically, Californians have shown weak allegiance to parties, a trend that has gained strength in recent years.

Nearly 2.5 million of the state’s 15 million voters belong to no party, up from 1.9 million five years ago.

In a blunt challenge to the power of parties, Californians voted in 1996 to adopt an open-primary system. That turned primaries into a mix-and-match: Voters could ignore party labels and cast ballots for any candidate. Republicans could vote in a Democratic nomination race, and vice versa. Independents were free to vote in any party’s race. The cross-party voting has led critics to charge that outsiders were hijacking each party’s nominating process.

It was the most sweeping reform of California elections since 1959, when the state abandoned the “cross-filing” system that let candidates seek nominations from multiple parties, a powerful tool for entrenched incumbents.

But in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court found that California’s open primary was unconstitutional. It ruled that a political party could not be forced to let voters who were not members have a say in choosing its nominees for public office.

Yet the court offered a road map for rewriting the law to survive legal challenge: It said a nonpartisan primary would pose no constitutional problems, because voters would no longer name party nominees.

Open-primary supporters followed that guidance in drafting the new initiative, which could be certified within weeks for a statewide vote in November. Elections officials are checking the validity of signatures on their petition to put it on the ballot. The measure needs 598,105 to qualify, but supporters say they turned in more than 900,000.

The proposal would make no changes to presidential primaries or the already nonpartisan election of state superintendent of public instruction.

As a central part of their rationale, supporters of the proposal cite the political map drawn by lawmakers in 2001. Designed mainly to protect incumbents, it left all but a handful of districts safe for one major party or the other.

As a result, the outcome of November’s election is all but certain in 52 of the state’s 53 congressional races and more than 80 of the 100 legislative contests, said Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan election guide.

“That’s what gerrymandering does: sweetheart deals,” he said.

So by and large, the competition in legislative contests is limited to primary races. Candidates who appeal most strongly to core party constituencies tend to win, which intensifies partisan combat in the Legislature.

Garry South, a Democratic strategist for the initiative campaign, described the measure as a remedy to the “unconscionable” district map imposed by lawmakers.

“It was just a bipartisan conspiracy, and it can’t be allowed to stand,” he said. “We’re going to pass this thing whether the parties like it or not.”

A coalition of parties -- Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Peace and Freedom -- mounted the court challenge that killed California’s last open-primary law. Over the last several weeks, leaders of the two major parties have opened discussions on a joint battle against the new initiative.

Torres, the Democratic chairman, called the measure a “moderate candidate’s dream,” but said it would “create very boring exchanges between similar party candidates.”

His chief ally, GOP Chairman Sundheim, was more skeptical. He questioned whether the measure would actually favor moderates. Referring to a similar nonpartisan primary system in Louisiana, Sundheim recalled the 1991 governor’s race that produced a runoff between former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and populist Democrat Edwin W. Edwards, squeezing out the moderate Republican incumbent, Buddy Roemer.

Indeed, Louisiana’s open primary often “shuns moderates and helps the extremes,” said Wayne Parent, a political science professor at Louisiana State University. “That’s the common thinking of most politicians in Louisiana.”

But California’s electorate -- at least in statewide races -- is far less polarized than Louisiana’s, which is often split between blocs of African Americans and conservative white Christians. As a whole, Californians typically favor moderates, whether Republicans like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Democrats like former Gov. Gray Davis.

If an open primary were to succeed in coupling a centrist governor with more moderate lawmakers, it could ultimately relieve some of Sacramento’s chronic deadlocks, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political science professor at USC.

“There may be a Legislature that is more reflective of the priorities of California’s general electorate,” she said.

So far, Schwarzenegger has taken no position on the proposal, despite the active role of Riordan -- his education secretary -- and other allies. A nonpartisan runoff system would spare Schwarzenegger the threat of a conservative challenge in a GOP primary, but his overt support for the proposal would risk antagonizing the Legislature.

To some veterans of California politics, the proposal’s potential effects seem overstated by both sides. GOP strategist Dan Schnur described it as merely “tinkering with the rules.”

“Everybody who wants it thinks it’s going to revolutionize life as we know it,” he said. “Everyone who opposes it thinks it’s going to end life as we know it. The truth is it’s not going to have nearly as much impact as either side thinks.”