California: Abel Maldonado

Abel Maldonado wants to end political parties as designations on the ballot.  The LA Times editorial board  demands the end of partisan politics.

Yet a liberal Times columnist understands the issue.  He understands that the reason people do NOT vote in LA municipal elections is because of their non partisan nature.

"Moreover, this local disconnection between Angelenos and their electoral politics magnifies the power of small, disgruntled groups concerned with narrow issues, and creates a field day for special interests, who only have to swing a few thousand voters to decisively influence an election.

What ought to be done? Here's a radical reform that would make a difference: Abandon nonpartisan municipal elections.

Last week, six Republican legislators joined with all of the Democrats in the State Capitol to vote for the single largest state-level tax increase in the history of our nation.  I could spend a few paragraphs outlining for you why, on a policy level, this is exactly the opposite of what Californians need right now from their state government.  But I wanted to spend a little more time on the political ramifications of that decision, at least as it impacted the delegates at the California Republican Party’s Organizational Convention which, ironically, took place last weekend, in the wake of the adoption of what I now call the “Big 5/Big Taxes/Open Primary” budget deal.

Days after the boyish Abel Maldonado first set foot in the California Assembly, he offered a wide-eyed, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" appraisal of a training program for new legislators.

"I definitely learned a lot," the freshman Republican told a reporter in 1999. "Especially in the session where the senior members told us how things really work."

After his recent high-pressure, high-visibility days and nights as the last holdout in the Sacramento budget drama, he can teach a few lessons of his own. In exchange for his reluctant yes to the state's controversial new budget, the 41-year-old Santa Maria grower demanded a ballot measure allowing open primaries, in which people can vote for candidates regardless of party affiliation.

The traditional media is fixated on framing the Maldonado Primary as an "open primary" - but that is misleading. Truly "open" primaries, where anyone can vote in a party primary, have been banned since California Democratic Party v. Jones and its offspring. Parties themselves can throw their primaries open to some or all voters not registered with them - as Dems have done with DTS voters in their primaries - but that is up to the parties themselves and cannot be mandated by the state.

CDP v Jones nuked ALL open primary laws in the country, including that of Washington State, which had been in place since 1935.