With public disgust with Congress at an all-time high, you’d think people would be paying attention to Tuesday’s election for the next rep from the Mass. 5th District, Ed Markey’s old seat. But election official see no excitement: Framingham Town Clerk Valerie Mulvey is worried turnout may not hit double-figures.
As I argued in my column Sunday, the problem isn’t just voter fatigue. Massachusetts is a one-party state. The Democratic Party uses its power to keep it that way and the Republican Party can’t do anything about it. As a result, voters are deprived of real choices and competitive races. Democrats don’t challenge other Democrats unless there’s an open seat. When there is a fight for the Democratic nomination, Republicans and independents are left out of the election that counts, and moderate Democrats are at a disadvantage in campaigns aimed at activists. Most of the time, Republicans don’t stand a chance in the general election, which discourages good candidates from making the attempt.
Some of us have grown old waiting for the Massachusetts Republican Party to develop into a competitive force. I submit that since it’s proving so hard to create a real two-party system in Massachusetts, maybe it makes sense to de-emphasize parties altogether.
Massachusetts should adopt an open primary system: Put all candidates from both parties on the primary ballot and let everyone vote. The top two vote-getters compete in the general election. California has adopted this reform, in part to remove the bias toward extremists fostered by party primaries. I think it might also take a little away from the advantage incumbents have, encourage more candidates to run and make general elections more meaningful.
The 5th District is a great example. In 1976 and in 3013, the seat opened up, attracting a crowd of Democrats. Markey won with 23 percent of the vote, and never faced a serious challenge in the next 37 years. Katherine won in a crowded field with 32 percent of the vote and if she doesn’t handily roll over Frank Addivinola Tuesday I’ll eat my hat.
Now, look at raw numbers: Clark won her primary with almost 22,000 votes – four times the 4,759 votes Addivinola tallied in the GOP primary: Five candidates in the Democratic primary won more votes than Addivinola: Clark; Peter Koutoujian, 15,290; Carl Sciortino, 11, 185; Will Brownsberger, 10,142; and Karen Spilka, 9,057.
Under an open primary system, Koutoujian would likely be facing off against Clark in Tuesday’s election – and people would be paying attention.
As i noted the last time this came up, I’m not really comfortable with this. There’s something about the minority party beng guaranteed a slot in the general that I think needs to be preserved. I’m not sure I can articulate it, but I know that I don’t want Texas adopting this system — so why should we?
All the Republicans in this race knew they faced long odds, and there were still three choices. Presumably each one factored the lower hurdle of the primary into their decision to run. The Democrats by contrast knew it would take a lot, and that likely kept some people out of the race.
So yes, more people would care about a Clark v. Koutoujian election, but the result would likely be the same, so I don’t see what we gain.
Partisan seat, partisan race, I figure.
I definitely feel this would shake up legislative races. IRV would solve a lot
Of these issues too.
Why? I don’t see that at all. If you assume that most Republican and conservative-leaning independents would tend to vote for Koutoujian rather than Clark (perhaps not a safe assumption, but let’s play along), and also gets let’s say 40% of the progressives who didn’t vote for either him or Clark, it seems to me that you’ve suddenly got a pretty competitive race.
If you’re a committed enough Republican to vote in the primary, you’re not going to vote for any Democrat in the general. A few people will, but not enough to sway the election.
n/t
Why not?
Texas (most of it) is a Republican stronghold. As it stands, a Democrat can win, especially if the GOP candidate is damaged. If they had this, then the #2 Republican steps in, and we are less likely to benefit.
With 2 Republicans fighting it out until the general election in Texas, that’s money that’s going to stay in TX, where otherwise it might stay out of ‘safe’ seats. I want Texas Republicans fighting it out and I want them to have to court the Democratic vote to win if I’ve already assumed that a straight-up D can’t get elected. I expect that in Texas this would have a moderating effect on the winners of the general as they could not just move to the right given how Texas leans politically (at least for now… keep alienating those Hispanic voters, GOP…)
That is exactly I do not want this system in Massachusetts for Federal elections. Any moderating influence in Democratic elections (at least in safe-D MA) is not what I’m looking for as a progressive activist and in addition I want Massachusetts Democratic dollars going to toss-up seats and not staying locked up here.
Under the current system traditional GOP voters and right leaning independents have no say in the election of their representative (unless they vote Dem in the primary). At the very least an open primary allows them to vote for, in their minds, the lesser of the two evils in the general election. At best a crowded open primary requires the top two candidates to build a coalition across party lines.
Sorry, but the solution to the problem you describe lies in changing the GOP, not the election system. Today’s Massachusetts GOP has more in common with Lyndon LaRouche, John Birch, and David Duke than any mainstream political party. Voters in Massachusetts have correctly and repeatedly rejected the extremist and delusional views it demands of its candidates. Such views ought NOT to be “represented” in a government founded on reason, truth, and reality.
The exclusion of “traditional GOP voters” is ENTIRELY the consequence of the party’s own suicidal lunge rightward. The fact that Mr. DeLeo is Speaker of the Massachusetts House demonstrates that “right leaning independents” already have an over-large say in the election of their representative.
The Massachusetts GOP has, through its own choices, moved further and further into the corrosive and rarefied air of Limbaugh-Land. They have, fortunately, shed influence and seats along the way — in my view, that shows that the current system IS WORKING.
Adequate representation? We have it now. The right wing is already over-represented in Massachusetts politics.
You want to foster more competition to get rid of the Speaker and other right leaning Dems? Open primaries could help. It’s much tougher to win a competitive high turnout general election than a low turnout, base driven closed primary. In the current system all the Speaker needs to do is win the latter.
Please see my response to porcupine/jimc below.
I think the best way to foster more competition is to strengthen the MA GOP. I agree that the current system can be improved — I’d force “unenrolled” voters to choose a party some number of weeks prior to a primary in order to pull a ballot for that primary.
In my view, primaries are SUPPOSE TO BE “base driven”. That’s why they exist — the primary is an important way that “the base” chooses the candidate that best reflects the views of that base.
We already know that Mr. DeLeo has killed legislation that was supported by significant majorities of Massachusetts Democrats. The Governor’s proposed budget was supported by more than seventy percent of Massachusetts Democratic voters — yet Mr. DeLeo killed it.
I’m sorry, but I think the move for an open primary is just plain wrong.
We need closed primaries.
My party is in trouble because people with zero commitment to ANY party flood the primary and are able to select unelectable candidates. In fact, they don’t actually CARE if they win, they merely want a soapbox for Agenda 21 or what have you.
If the majority party – unenrolleds – had to choose a party in order to vote, we’d see more centrist and viable candidates on both sides.
just for the record, though, I have trouble with the premise (alluded to here and in the post) that Democratic primaries don’t produce centrist candidates.
I don’t read porcupine’s post as arguing that the current system isn’t producing centrist candidates. I read it as arguing that it would produce a larger number of them and that those candidates would be less extreme (and presumably more viable).
I don’t share porcupine’s view of the Democratic party. I suspect you and I share the sense that the Democratic field is already too centrist. Nevertheless, I think her analysis of the GOP is spot-on.
I agree with her that a closed primary system would strengthen the MA GOP (perhaps this is why some are calling for primaries to be more open). As the MA GOP recovered, I think we’d see more of today’s “Democrats” choosing to run as Republicans. I think that, in turn, would create opportunities for the Democratic party to reassert the values that most Democrats hold dear.
I, frankly, view “centrist” and “viable” candidates as euphemisms for the currently-endangered species of “moderate Republican”. I think we need them, and I think we need them to be elected as the Republicans that they are — in Massachusetts and in Washington, DC.
I like Ed Markey, but I don’t like the fact that he served 37 years without ever facing a competitive primary challenge or a competitive general election campaign. I don’t think that’s good for Democrats, and it produces a sclerotic body politic.
I enthusiastically agree with you about this.
The problem is math. Let’s say you get a really exciting primary — 6 Democratic candidates and 2 GOP candidates. Not crazy.
Let’s also say that 60% of voters in the district are Democratic, and that, nearly uniformly, they’d prefer any of the Dems to any of the GOPers [and, for Republican voters, vice versa].
So, here’s the outcome of the race:
GOP1: 21%
GOP2: 19%
Dem1: 16%
Dem2: 15%
Dem3: 9%
Dem4: 9%
Dem5: 7%
Dem6: 4%
See the problem? The number of candidates from each party has a remarkable impact on the number of candidates from each party in the general election. It’s too easy to get outcomes where the two choices in the general provide less choice to the voters. Furthermore, it provides a remarkably perverse incentive for (in this case, GOP1 and GOP2) to encourage other Dems to get into the race, to dilute the Dem vote. Similarly, you get this perverse incentive of the Dems to keep people out of the primary, because the outcome may mean no Dems in the general election.
So what’s the fix? IRV. If you do IRV, an open primary works just fine, because the preferred candidates will “bubble” to the top. In this case, Dem6’s votes would be redistributed to the other Dems [and, if there were crossover appeal, to GOP1 and GOP2]. Then Dem5’s votes would be redistributed, etc. This approach eliminates the dilution problem, encourages candidates to try to “peel off” votes by staking strong stances on various issues, and encourages positive campaigning, because I’d rather get somebody’s #2 vote than their #8 vote and I won’t get their #2 if I poke their #1 candidate in the eye with a stick.
Massachusetts is decidedly not a one-party state. We certainly have large Democratic majorities in the legislature (9:1 in senate, 4:1 in house). But, four of our last five governors were Republican.
The Republicans can win, but they can’t win on the national brand. Massachusetts citizens don’t like paying taxes (who does!), but when compared to the nation’s politics, we do favor civil rights, we don’t like guns, we do like education, we do like public involvement in our lives [health care, social services, etc], we do like unions, we are pro-choice, and we do like environmental protection. I think that GOP candidates who fit that mold can and will do well in Massachusetts, including Mitt Romney [at the time], Charlie Baker, Tisei, etc. But if you’re running for Congress as a GOP, you’ve got to explain to the voters that you’re not aligned with Boehner nor McConnell, because those two gentlemen are far out-of-step with Massachusetts voters.
Republicans can win in Massachusetts — but they’ve got to move leftword in rhetoric and in policy in a number of areas because, wait for it… Massachusetts voters care about issues, have opinions which in aggregate are to the left of center, and will tend to support candidates who take those positions.
You want to change that? You can’t change the voters, and you don’t need to change the rules. Change the candidates.
I think most MA voters are somewhat conservative on fiscal issues. A lot of people still (falsely) believe we live in Taxachusetts and are paying more than they get out in taxes. A lot of people think our government runs poorly and the solution is to cut rather than improve it. A lot of people thing public employees are getting a good deal at the general public’s expense. And a lot of these people would be Republicans ten or twenty years ago but are now part of the ‘unenrolleds’ we always hear about. They are indifferent to social issues and really animated about taxes. If the MA GOP had a brain like it once did, it could translate those voters into viable candidates and play the field better.
I’d take an expanded minority caucus of Dan Winslow’s in either chamber if it meant we had less DINOs moving our own caucus to the right. A smaller but more ideologically progressive majority in government wouldn’t be the first thing. Particularly since I think it could actually do more on ethics reform, campaign finance reform, and trimming patronage than the status quo.
I think there’s still a (very wrong) sense out there that Massachusetts is a bad place to do business.
We should be doing a better job of touting the reality of our success in this area.
The latest list of “Best States for Business” published by the oft-cited and non-partisan Forbes magazine shows Massachusetts as the 13th best state to do business. That’s right, the 13th *best*:
http://www.forbes.com/best-states-for-business/list/
Yes, we continue to rank near the bottom (49th) in terms of “business cost” (i.e. labor costs, energy costs and corporate taxes) and towards the bottom (35th) if you see “excessive regulations” as a reason the state is “bad for business.” BUT, we now rank quite well in terms of growth prospects (15th), labor supply (6th) and our overall “economic climate” (7th).
Most importantly, and this is widely misunderstood, Massachusetts now ranks #1 (best of all states!) in the “quality of life index.” This measure takes in to account poverty rates, crime rates, cost of living, school test performance, college rankings, overall health, cultural and recreation opportunities, and even the weather. Taking all of these in to account – many of which are certainly influenced by our Democratic-controlled Legislature and Governor – we rank first among all.
To me, this is all very good news that doesn’t get shared enough and is not widely understood.
I like the concept of open primaries. Here’s another benefit of the California system: During the “preliminary”, if one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, then he/she is elected and does not need to participate in the general election.
As an example, consider Mike Capuano, who never has opposition, With this approach, he would appear only on the preliminary ballot. Because he would not appear on the ballot for the general election, he would save money. More importantly, the general election ballot would be a bit shorter, which would be good for everybody as would it would allow voters to focus on the important contested elections.