top two primary

From the vault: “In Defense of Partisan Hacks”

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So I dusted off my best NPR voice and was in the KJZZ studio earlier today being interviewed by Steve Goldstein for Here and Now. The topic was the National Federation of Republican Women being in town this week and how the parties planned to target women voters. This old post of mine is not directly related to the topic of the interview but I thought of it because I ended the interview by proudly stating that I was a partisan and because the AZ Capitol Times Yellow Sheet reported that the Top Two people were going to be launching their initiative again and are leaning on prominent Arizona Democrats to support it.

From August 14, 2012:

Republic columnist Laurie Roberts took some time off from her “De-kook the Capitol” project (in which somehow our Republican controlled legislature will become less extreme by, erm, electing more Republicans) to hawk the Open Primaries initiative.

The top-two primary initiative would usher in a new system of nominating congressional, state, county and local officials. Instead of holding partisan primaries, Arizona would hold one primary open to all voters and the top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, would move to the general.

Gone would be the day when most congressional and legislative elections are decided in the primary, when politicians who cater to narrow ideological interests find themselves elected before most voters ever cast a ballot.

Of course, Roberts produces no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this claim but, whatever. Puppies! Rainbows! I’ve already explained why I don’t care for this primary initiative and don’t trust many of it’s proponents so I won’t get too deeply into that again. What irked me about Laurie’s piece was her obvious disdain for partisan activism.

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It’s difficult to “vote for the person and not the party” when you know nothing about the person

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StopTop2

Craig McDermott and I have been debating Top Two Primary campaign director Patrick McWhortor in the comments section of Craig’s recent post (“Top Two” primaries: Propaganda vs. truth) about the lack of evidence that this type of reforms works to increase voter turnout. In one of McWhortor’s rebuttals he threw in the oft-repeated truism accepted as commonsense wisdom in much of the American public.

“If you believe that having a D by the name is an automatic “pass” or having a R by the name is an automatic “pass”, then of course this reform means nothing to you. But if you believe, as a majority of voters do, that they should vote for the person, not the party, then this reform makes complete sense.”

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Top Two Primary is back, with twice the magical thinking.

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votePhoto: Arizona Capitol Times

As promised, the brain trust of Arizona centrist business establishment types (country club Republicans and corporate Dems) that failed to pass Prop 121 in 2012 plan to return with a slightly altered version of it in 2016.

Former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, who led the campaign for Proposition 121 and is spearheading the 2016 measure, said organizers of the proposed Open Nonpartisan Primary Election plan on doing things a bit differently this time around.

“We get we lost last time,” Johnson said. “You don’t have to remind me of that. I get that one. So you have to look at why did I lose and what assets are out there that I can utilize to try to expand it.

Top Two primaries (also known as open or jungle primaries) are based on the surreal premise that having only the top two vote getters in the primary (regardless of party affiliation) advance to the general will improve government by enabling more “moderate” (read: business-friendly) candidates to defeat partisan ideologues. It seems reasonable if you don’t think about it for more than thirty seconds (and proponents are dearly hoping you won’t) but, alas, a cursory examination of the wildly optimistic promises of this scheme reveals its implausibility as a statewide solution for Arizona’s political dysfunction.

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Sham Cesar Chavez candidate demonstrates the importance of partisans

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The candidate named Cesar Chavez, running in the Congressional primary in AZ CD7, has been revealed to be a guy formerly named Scott Fistler who was a Republican until recently and had sought other offices in the past as a member of that party.

After petitioning a state superior court last November and paying $319, Fistler now legally shares the name of the celebrated labor movement icon, Cesar Chavez. Earlier this year, Chavez (formerly Fistler) became a Democrat, and – before Ed Pastor announced his retirement from Congress – filed to run in the heavily Hispanic 7th Congressional District.

In his petition for a name change, Fistler wrote that he had “experienced many hardships because of my name.”

It’s unclear at this point whether this guy is a lone wolf or someone who was recruited to act as a spoiler – a la Olivia Cortes in the 2011 Russell Pearce recall. Either way, he’s a sham candidate and such candidacies are an affront to democracy and the community and (even more reprehensibly) often exploitive of highly vulnerable people, even if the candidates (or whoever puts them up to it) follow the letter of the law to qualify for the ballot. Chavez (nee Fistler) managed to get the maximum number of signatures and the state Dem party is exploring what options they have, if any, to remove him from the ballot.

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