As the California Republican Party engages in a healthy debate over how to best protect itself and its nominees from the impacts of Proposition 14, which is intended to weaken the role of political parties in California, there will be a lot of explanations and clarifications that will need to take place.
Yesterday on the FlashReport, CRP Chairman Ron Nehring walked readers through why the change in the election process necessitates changes by our party. Up until 2010 we all enjoyed a system with a June primary followed by a November general election. Now, with Prop. 14, we have a general election in June, and a run-off election in November. No longer does the party have a mechanism ask all Republican voters to weigh in on their pick as to who our standard bearer should be — which is why Nehring has proposed an alternative method. It’s not perfect — far from it. But it is significantly better than doing nothing at all, and watching the Republican Party, over time, move ever leftward. In 2000 we saw, in just one year of implementation Prop. 198 (before the SCOTUS tossed it) several districts where the choice of Republican voters for the legislature did not end up as the top vote getting Republican (Democrats crossed party lines in large numbers in "safe" Republican seats to pick their least objectionable GOPer).
We’ll be talking a lot about this on the FlashReport, but I got an email today which causes me to want to dispel on misunderstanding right away. In Nehring’s rules proposal, there is a provision that gives incumbent Republican legislators seeking re-election to the same level of seat, assuming it isn’t against another legislator an automatic nomination — with some caveats. One of the caveats is being misinterpreted. The one that says that you get the nomination unless: (C) Voted against an official position of the caucus.
At least one person with whom I’ve emailed thinks this means that if some staffer puts a "caucus position" on an analysis and a legislator then votes differently, that they lose the automatic nomination.
This provision (the precise wording of which clearly needs to be cleaned up) is intended to say that if the House, Senate or Assembly GOP Caucuses choose to do so, by a majority vote they may determine an official caucus position for this rule. This is intended to provide flexibility to the caucuses, but provide a mechanism to deal with things like if a Republican votes with Democrats for Speaker (Paul Horcher, Doris Allen, Brian Setencich, etc.). It is purposely left vague because you cannot predict when a major issue will arise and what it will be.
The premise for having conditions is that the Republican Party is not an aristocracy, and it’s really kind of extraordinary to just presume that someone who is an incumbent "deserves" to be renominated, no matter what.
Frankly, even if an incumbent GOP legislator chooses to vote for higher taxes or votes to put one on the ballot, it does not mean that they will not be the GOP nominee in their re-election. It just means they would have to make their case to a caucus (a good number of the participants in which will have been appointed by that legislator).