Pinboard Links

Flap’s Links and Comments for March 28th on 18:00

These are my links for March 28th from 18:00 to 18:03:

  • California Republicans: State GOP trying to craft its own mail-in primary before open primary law takes effect – When the California Republican Party adopted a plan to survey the state's 5.3 million GOP voters to decide who should be their party's standard-bearer in future elections, the move provided a compromise ending to a contentious battle over how to blunt the voter-approved "top two" primary system.

    But there are deep questions and some skepticism over whether the party will be able to afford and administer such an ambitious undertaking.

    "I don't think it will ever be implemented," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races. "They punted.… I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see the state party change its mind between now and June 2014."

    The move, made at the California Republican Party convention last weekend, was prompted by Proposition 14, which changed the state's electoral system. Under it, candidates from all parties compete in a primary, after which the top two vote-getters compete in a general election — even if they are members of the same party. The ballot measure, approved last year, was intended to create competition and loosen the grip that the state's most partisan voters have on primary elections.

    Democrats are expected to take up the matter when they hold their convention next month.

    Under the GOP measure approved last week, the candidate who wins a mail-in nomination contest will be listed as the official Republican candidate on party mailers and will have access to party resources. The plan beat out two competing proposals — one by party leaders in which a small number of insiders would anoint nominees, and one by elected officials where in most cases incumbents would be automatically endorsed.

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    Read it all.

    This mail-in proposal will never be implemented.

  • California GOP hits sharp skid – Demographics and Decline of So Cal Defense Industry – There's more to the Republican decline than demography. The near-demise of the Southern California defense industry after the end of the Cold War sparked an exodus of defense workers out of the state and that, coupled with an inflow of immigrants, shifted the politics of Los Angeles County from party-neutral to strongly Democratic, thus tilting the whole state.

    Simultaneously, the state GOP changed itself. What was once a middle-of-the-road party that dominated California as Democrats paddled on the left reconfigured itself into a right-wing party.

    The party's stridency on taxes, illegal immigration, abortion and other hot-button issues alienated both white moderates – most noticeably in the suburbs – and the surging numbers of Latino and Asian voters.

    The GOP's incoming state chairman, Tom Del Beccaro, acknowledged the party's deterioration during its recent convention in Sacramento.

    "We do not pay enough attention to our next generation," Del Beccaro told delegates. "We are not talking to enough minority voters, we are not talking to enough independents and we are not even talking to enough Democrats. Quite frankly, we have trapped ourselves into talking to the converted instead of inspiring a new generation of voters."

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    Southern California is rapidly changing from the California of my youth.

    I am in the aging white population which will soon die off and not be replaced by migration from other areas of the USA.

    I wonder if my children, will have a future in California as one is already relocating to the Mid-West.