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Flap’s Links and Comments for March 15th on 10:28

These are my links for March 15th from 10:28 to 10:43:

  • Process issue will define CA GOP or NOT – The passage last year of Proposition 14, which replaced part primaries with an "open" primary and run-off in California, has set off a bitter fight inside the California Republican Party, which heads into a convention this weekend in Sacramento girding for a procedural battle that will shape its identity.

    The conservative party leadership, led by outgoing party Chairman Ron Nehring, has proposed that the party choose and designate a candidate despite the changed system, and that only the party choice be able to benefit from — among other things — crucial state party financial support.

    Members of Congress and state legislators, meanwhile, are pushing back quite hard, as in an email earlier this month signed by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and others:

     

    [Nehring's proposed] system forces endorsements – even when there are good Republicans running against good Republicans. Worse, should the "endorsed" candidate lose the June election, the actual winner is still not the official nominee of the GOP and could be denied any Republican resources. This is a disaster in the making!

    The second option is an alternative bylaw amendment supported by a vast majority of the Congressional delegation as well as overwhelming majorities in the Senate and Assembly Caucuses that allows the Republican Party to endorse when special circumstances arise – when a Republican otherwise might not make it onto the November ballot or when liberal interest groups or labor unions are trying to elect a sham "Republican" candidate who will not vote for Republican principles. 

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    The real problem is that in California with the open primary and top two system of elections, there is really NO reason to be a registered member of a political party.

    GOP Insiders want to preserve their power of the purse (for what it is worth since the Cal GOP is broke)and endorsements. Exisiting office holders don't want the smoke-filled room full of conservative activists calling the shots – as they routinely stack the County GOP Central Committees.

    If the Ron Nehring proposal passes, there will be a flood of Republicans re-registering to Decline to State.

    And, why not?

  • Dan Walters: Brown-GOP budget talks hit a wall – Confusion reigned in the Capitol Monday over whether Gov. Jerry Brown's overtures to five Republican senators to support his budget plan had utterly failed, or whether suspension of their talks is merely a temporary setback.

    Whatever the case, it appeared that Brown's hopes of placing $10 billion-plus a year in tax extensions on a June 7 special-election ballot had been dashed. Even if a budget agreement eventually emerges, the election will almost certainly be delayed.

    That would seem to be a minor hiccup, but having an election on June 7 – before the summer doldrums set in – has been one of several conditions Brown hoped would give his plan its best chance of winning voter support.

    He also wants at least a veneer of bipartisan support, no active business opposition, a simple yes or no on a single measure, and perhaps an all-mail election to create an optimal climate for what would be, under any circumstances, an iffy situation – asking voters to raise taxes by about $1,000 per family per year in the midst of the worst recession in 80 years.

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    I doubt the tax extensions would pass in any case. The California economy sucks and unemployment is too high.

    The Democrat welfare state has caught up with the taxpayer funders and the cuts will not be pretty.

    But, hey Jerry Brown wanted this job.

2 Comments

  • Richard Winger

    This article would be better if it referred to Prop. 14 as a top-two system, not an “open primary.” “Open primary” has been defined in political science textbooks and US Supreme Court opinions as a system in which each party has its own primary and its own nominees, but any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary. Prop. 14 eliminates party nominees and party primaries. It is not good writing to refer to two different subjects with the same phrase.