California: What a jungle!
The most important election of them all is this year’s battle for governor of California.
There are hundreds of important elections this year — for state legislature, governor, House and Senate. Legislative and gubernatorial races will decide which parties will draw new congressional district lines in 2020. House and Senate races will determine the future of health care, immigration, the Dreamers and climate change.
Yet the most important of them all is this year’s battle for governor of California. First, because California, home to almost 40 million, is so powerful it’s practically its own country, the world’s fifth largest economy. Second, because Sacramento today is anti-Trump headquarters, with Gov. Jerry Brown leading national opposition to Donald Trump on everything from health care to climate change to immigration.
Ending the eighth year of his second two terms as governor, Brown is banned from seeking another four years, or “termed out.” (Full disclosure: I served four years in Brown’s first administration.) Which means that whoever succeeds him will inherit not only the responsibility of governing California, but the mantle of leading state government resistance to destructive policies of the Trump administration.
But if the California governor’s primary on June 5 is the most important, it’s also the most complicated, because of California’s bizarre primary election rules.
Unlike most other states, voters in California general elections don’t get to choose between the top Democrat and the top Republican, as determined by each party’s primary. Under the rules of California’s “jungle primary,” adopted by initiative in 2010, voters choose between the two top votegetters in the primary, regardless of party. It could be one Democrat and one Republican. Or two Democrats. Or two Republicans. And this year that makes for some very strange politics.
There are a total of 27 candidates running for governor. Three others, including former NFL star Rosey Grier, dropped out. Among Democrats, the four leading contenders are: frontrunner Gavin Newsom, currently the lieutenant governor; Antonio Villaraigosa, former mayor of Los Angeles; John Chiang, state treasurer; and Delaine Eastin, former superintendent of public instruction.
The California Republican Party is moribund today. It actually ranks third, behind Democrats and independents. Hillary Clinton won the state by 30 points. It has been almost a decade since a Republican won statewide. It’s considered so hopeless the party didn’t even endorse a candidate for governor this year.
Nevertheless, there are six Republicans running, including front-runner John Cox, a wealthy businessman and perennial loser, who moved to California from Illinois after running and losing for Congress, Senate and the presidency of the United States.
However, even though Cox doesn’t have a chance, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1, party bigshots led by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — believing that having any Republican on the ballot will encourage Republicans to turn out and vote in congressional races — have lined up behind Cox and persuaded President Trump to endorse him.
“He’ll be the best governor you’ve ever had,” Trump tweeted this week in typical understatement. “I look forward to working with him to Make California Great Again.”
So the real challenge in the primary, given that Newsom has a lock on first place, is: Whom will he run against in November? Fellow Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa or Republican John Cox? Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Kevin McCarthy is not the only one who wants John Cox on the general election ballot. So does leading Democrat Gavin Newsom, because he’d rather run against Cox, whom he’s sure to beat, than Antonio Villaraigosa, to whom he could lose. So some Newsom supporters are sponsoring ads attacking Cox as an ally of Trump in order, perversely, to help him get enough Republican votes to knock Villaraigosa out of the run-off.
Meanwhile, wealthy backers of Villaraigosa, knowing his only chance of making the run-off against Newsom is to get more votes than Cox in the primary, have sponsored ads backing three other Republicans in the race — in order to depress Cox’s vote total and catapult Villaraigosa into the run-off.
But, wait, there’s more. As reported by CalMatters, Democrat Delaine Eastin, not content to sit on the sidelines, is accusing Newsom of using tactics that will actually help Donald Trump by increasing Republican turnout and helping Republicans hold on to several key congressional seats. And she’s right.
What a mess. Democrats fighting Democrats? Democrats helping Republicans in order to hurt other Democrats? Like other well-meaning reforms, the jungle primary’s done the opposite of what was promised. Instead of decreasing partisanship, it’s just created more of it. Yes, a lot of good ideas come from California. The jungle primary is not one of them.