My friend Larry Levine, a Democratic consultant, posted a very interesting factoid on our election law blog today. It is too interesting a matter to pass up on presenting here, so I want to be sure I am crediting Larry.
If Proposition 14 were in place in the most recent election, the top two vote getters for Attorney General would face off in the Fall general election. Who were they? Well, Republican Steve Cooley got the most votes of any candidate, Democrat or Republican. He would definitely be in the runoff. But conservative Republican John Eastman is currently within 9,435 votes of being the second biggest vote getter in the primary, as that is the small margin separating him and Kamala Harris, who won the Democrat primary.
Wow. The situation was caused by the fact that there were more candidates running in the Democrat primary for AG than the Republican primary, thus depressing overall vote among the Democrat candidates. That is a very interesting clue about how Proposition 14 will work in future. But could it be that under Proposition 14, Republicans will "own" the Attorney General position?
June 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Larry Levine is a very bright political strategist and it was good of you to share his views with the rest of us, but he failed to recognize that neither Jerry Brown nor Barbara Boxer had any GOTV effort this time around. They simply did not need to spend the money as their places on the November ballot were assured. This decision, of course, affected the lower races as well.
Under Proposition 14, all viable candidates will need to be concerned about GOTV to ensure that they make the top two. So, comparing this election to a post Prop 14 election just doesn’t pass the giggle test.
Have fun in Ireland.
June 17th, 2010 at 12:00 am
If Proposition 14 had been in effect for this election cycle, then the California Republican Party would have “nominated” John Eastman. (The new rules for picking Party nominees would have allowed County Central Committee members and State Central Committee delegates to nominate a candidate, and Eastman was the clear favorite among those people.)
It is impossible to say what impact an official Party endorsement and “nomination” would have had on John Eastman in the primary, but it seems very plausible that he would have gained some votes, thus ensuring that the November election would be between John Eastman as the Republican nominee and Steve Cooley as the other Republican candidate.
There would be no write-in candidates on the ballot, no Democrats, and no third party candidates.
Who would win in that scenario? Who knows, but I sure would not bet against the public employee unions…
Governor Schwarzenegger has done many horrible things, but Prop 14 will forever be at the top of the list.
June 18th, 2010 at 12:00 am
The latest is that Kamala Harris has 25K more votes than John Eastman.
There are other interesting “could have been” November matchups, though:
Rep. Jane Harman vs. Marcy Winograd (both Dems) in CD 36
Rep. Gary Miller vs. Phil Liberatore (both Republicans) in CD 42
Jeff Denham vs. Jim Patterson (both Republicans) in CD 19
In the two Republican seats, those November matchups would have been competitive, when under the current rules the Democrat nominee, who finished third overall will not be competitive this November.
With the Democrat seat, Harman probably wins either way, but she faces a tougher race against the Republican nominee in November than she would have against Winograd who ran to Harman’s left in the primary.