Newsletter: The ballot reform that could have saved California from Steve Garvey vs. Adam Schiff

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, March 16, 2024. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

First, before getting mired in the political muck, some good news: The Los Angeles Times shared an Oscar for best short documentary for the film “The Last Repair Shop.” The film profiles four musical instrument repair workers in L.A. Unified, one of the few school districts in the U.S. to provide free, working instruments to band students. The film, as I wrote in this newsletter last December, should make any Angeleno who watches it proud to hail from a city that enriches students like this and has dedicated, highly talented public servants who work to keep it that way. Their work was portrayed beautifully by Oscar-winning filmmakers Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers.

Now, back to our regular programming of politics and policy discussions — in this case, the election in California to fill the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s former U.S. Senate seat.

The top vote-getter didn’t surprise anyone; as Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) had been seen as the front-runner since the moment he announced his candidacy. What was disappointing, if not surprising, was how the election played out: Instead of the polite battle among three highly respected California Democrats in Schiff, Rep. Katie Porter (Irvine) and Rep. Barbara Lee (Oakland), we ended with cries of a “rigged” election because Schiff and his allies spent millions of dollars on ads targeting Republican Steve Garvey, elevating his profile among conservative voters. Porter later did the same, running ads targeting conservative Republican Eric Early. In a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 2-1, Garvey finished second and will go on to be the GOP’s sacrificial lamb on the general election ballot in November.

With the right election reforms, it doesn’t have to be this way. Almost as soon as the election winners became clear, several readers wrote letters to the editor advocating for ranked-choice voting, a system meant to gauge the breadth of a candidate’s support (whereas now, a highly polarizing figure can easily advance with a relatively small plurality). In an op-ed article, ranked-choice voting advocates Marcela Miranda-Caballero and David Daley explain how such a system works:

“It allows voters to rank their chosen candidates — first, second, third and so on — and enables an instant runoff: If no one secures a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their votes awarded to their supporters’ next choice, a process repeated until one candidate gets more than 50%. This eliminates spoiler candidates, wasted votes for eliminated candidates, winners with relatively small pluralities, and duplicitous tactics like Schiff’s and Porter’s.

“One option is for California to adopt a ‘final four’ model such as the one being used successfully in Alaska. Instead of advancing just two candidates from the primary, the state admits the top four to the general election, which is then decided by ranked choice.

“This allows multiple candidates of different ideological stripes within a party to run against one another without splitting the field, which is particularly important in an overwhelmingly blue state like California. It also helps ensure that both major parties have at least one candidate in the general election. That could have allowed Schiff, Garvey, Lee and Porter to all make their cases before a much larger and more representative November electorate.”

Why would a rape survivor endorse Donald Trump? Columnist Robin Abcarian slams Rep. Nancy Mace for weaponizing ABC News commentator George Stephanopoulos’ perfectly reasonable question of why the South Carolina Republican, herself a rape survivor, could endorse Donald Trump, who has been adjudicated liable for rape: “Trying to turn the tables on Stephanopoulos was a convenient way of deflecting her obvious hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy of all the family-values-professing types who embrace the reelection of the twice-impeached former president.”

Sheryl Swoopes is right: Black people can’t be racist. The former WNBA great’s remark, made in the wake of another controversy over her discussion of college basketball star Caitlin Clark, has a good point, writes Clyde W. Ford. More importantly, he says, making the distinction between prejudice and racism opens the door to a productive conversation on the power gap between white and Black people.

Kate Middleton messed up, but the British royal family has bigger problems than one photo. The doctored photo debacle meant to quell the #WhereIsKate rumors points to a much more serious problem for the ruling Windsors: There’s a shortage of younger working royals who can pick up the slack for King Charles III as he undergoes cancer treatment and for the formerly omnipresent Princess Kate as she recovers from surgery. “Amid the royal health crises, the health of the monarchy overall is being tested,” writes Autumn Brewington.

“American Fiction’s” Oscar shows not all movies by Black directors need to be about violence and poverty. Director and writer Cord Jefferson’s movie had a budget of less than $10 million but went on to earn more than twice that at the box office, garner multiple Oscar nominations and snag a statue for Jefferson, who said there’s a lesson in all this: Hollywood should take more chances on films that don’t cost a blockbuster’s budget. Editorial writer Carla Hall also says that Jefferson’s success with his satire featuring Black actors and based on a novel by a Black author shows that diversity in filmmaking needn’t always mean movies about “guns, gangs and drugs.”

When a dog bites, it’s probably because you weren’t paying attention. The surge in pandemic dog adoptions meant new owners were not properly training and socializing their pets. We’re seeing the consequences now: Reported emergency room visits for dig bites in California hit an all-time high in 2022. Canine scientist Melonie San Pietro says inexperienced pet owners are likely missing the signs of anxiety in dogs that often precede biting.

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• LZ Granderson: What Katie Britt’s misleading, melodramatic speech revealed about the Republican Party
• Jonah Goldberg: Trump and his MAGA movement stormed the Republican establishment. Now they have become it
• Jackie Calmes: Have Democrats finally stopped wimping out?

From the op-ed desk

• Inflation isn’t the real problem for the U.S. economy. The housing shortage is
• My family in Gaza faces starvation. How do I find solace this Ramadan?
• The border crisis factor no one talks about: American guns

From the editorial board

• Huntington Beach’s MAGA message to the world
• Winter permits for Mt. Baldy could save lives of hikers — and rescuers
• California’s rat poison bans aren’t working. Wild animals and pets are still dying

Letters to the editor

• “I see myself in Katie Britt” — what liberal critics missed in the senator’s response
• Measure HLA shows that loud NIMBYs aren’t the majority
• First library books, now the LGBTQ+ Pride flag. What’s next, Huntington Beach?