The price of California’s budget: Part 1

Also see parts 2 and 3.

If you ever doubted that Republicans and Democrats want to rule this country without any input whatsoever from smaller parties that represent alternative viewpoints, doubt no more. This week in Sacramento, CA, they passed legislation that, if implemented, will in effect remove my right to vote for candidates from any party other than Republican or Democrat in elections that decide who represents me in statewide and congressional offices. Here’s how it went down.

California has been without a budget for months now. State workers have been forced to take two unpaid days leave a month, and several hundred thousand of them were facing layoff later in the year if a budget didn’t pass. Construction projects had been stopped, laying off thousands of people working for contractors. State money to pay for social services had dried up. The budget impasse had been long drawn out because a budget requires a two-third majority to pass—as does any legislation that involves a tax increase. Republicans in the state senate and assembly refused to vote in favor of any of the various iterations of the proposed budget.

And then along came Abel, long, tall Abel. California State Senator Abel Maldonado, from a largely rural district that runs up the coast from almost Santa Barbara in SoCal to just south of Palo Alto in the Bay Area, had supported many of Governor Schwarzenegger’s policies, but Arnie hadn’t returned the favor in Maldonado’s own campaign to become the Republican nominee for State Controller in 2006, in which his main opponent in the primary defeated Maldonado by a slim margin of 4.7 percent. (The State Controller accounts for and controls the disbursement of all state funds.)

Former San Francisco Mayor and State Assembly leader Willie Brown has a summation of the recent situation in his Sunday column in the San Francisco Chronicle here. According to Brown—a Democrat who admires Republican Maldonado (nothing wrong with that)—the disgruntled young gun sat on his hands until the very last minute then forced a deal that included passage of his bill that will put a proposed constitutional amendment to California voters. If approved by voters, the amendment will institute what is called a top two candidate open primary, and it works like this:

There will be a version of an “open primary” that is new to California. As things stand now, during a primary election, anybody—regardless of their party registration or Decline to State status—can vote in the primary for any party that agrees to let them do so. In the February 2008 primary, for example, Democrats and some smaller parties had open primaries; the Republicans didn’t. ///

If Maldonado’s constitutional amendment is approved by the voters in 2010, there will instead be an open slather primary in June of election years. Candidates can decide for themselves whether they’ll display their party affiliation. Under the constitutional amendment:

A political party or party central committee shall not nominate a candidate for any congressional or state elective office at the voter-nominated primary.

But those contests will not be truly nonpartisan in the sense that the nonpartisan offices defined in the constitution (such as mayor) are now because of the current prohibition on political parties or party central committees “endorsing, supporting, or opposing a candidate for nonpartisan office”. The new constitutional amendment

... shall not be interpreted to prohibit a political party or party central committee from endorsing, supporting, or opposing any candidate for a congressional or state elective office.

Furthermore, the amendment removes that prohibition, which was largely ignored, from nonpartisan races and replaces it with:

A political party or party central committee shall not nominate a candidate for nonpartisan office, and the candidate's party preference shall not be included on the ballot for the nonpartisan office.

In this morning’s Newsmaker interview on ABC’s This Week, Schwarzenegger was asked by host George Stephanopoulos about the proposal, which Stephanopoulos said is opposed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike. Here is Schwarzenegger’s reply, taken from the show’s transcript posted here.

Let's open up the primaries, no different than when you have a mayoral race. Like in Los Angeles right now, Villaraigosa -- there's an open primary. There's an open election, where you have the first two -- the two top candidates then have a run-off election. That's the way to do it. It doesn't matter which party it is.

If the people choose one, if they're Democrat, then so be it. If they choose the Republican, if they choose a Democrat and a Republican, and they have them go for the run-off election, that's the way it ought to be.

While I sympathize with Schwarzenegger’s stated reason for supporting the change—“Open primaries are good for the people because then people [candidates] don't have to make decisions and say things to appeal with their party so they can win the primary and then, all of a sudden, they have to come to the middle”, something he refers to as “horrible” for the candidate—I think he still makes the fundamental mistake of defining elections in terms of candidates’ rights rather than voters’ rights. (The interpretation in square brackets is mine.)

Furthermore, the “horrible” part will still be there even with this amendment, because parties will still provide monetary and logistical support to the candidates they favor, and only someone wealthy enough to bankroll him- or herself—or able to attract huge amounts of money from donors—will have any chance of competing. Obama’s success at attracting small donations in large numbers is the exception rather than the rule, so the donors are likely to be interest groups. A limit on campaign spending would be more effective at curbing the horribleness, but that’s hardly likely to happen.

In Part 2 I’ll look at more of the wording of the amendment itself, and the change it will effect on what appears on the ballot if it is approved by voters and becomes law on January 1, 2011.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

© Scoop Media