Measure could lead to jungle primary
Proposal pits state candidates in all parties against each other
Welcome to the jungle, Florida. Voters could make one of the biggest changes ever to state elections if they approve a proposed ballot measure in 2020 to have all state candidates – Democratic, Republican and independent – face off in one big “jungle” primary open to all voters.
In such a system, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, would advance to a general election.
That means voters could end up making a final choice between two Democrats or two Republicans if they finish first and second. In 2018, the top two finishers in the two gubernatorial primaries were Republicans Ron DeSantis and Adam Putnam, with five major Democrats splitting the vote in their race.
Supporters, including Mike Fernandez, a billionaire Miami insurance executive who has put $6.3 million into the campaign, say it would finally allow the state’s 3.6 million non-party voters barred from closed party primaries to participate fully.
“This is not one person’s folly,” Fernandez said. “How about voters just vote for whoever they want to? Why put a label on [candidates]?”
Critics, citing how California’s politics have been transformed by the jungle primary it adopted in 2010, say it would have severe effects for any party shut out of a major statewide race.
“It’s a whole other new, crazy system that only a few other states do,” said Matthew Isbell, who runs
the MCI Maps website devoted to political mapmaking and analysis. “It’s a pretty big jump all at once.”
The Republican and Democratic parties are both opposed to the idea. The GOP filed a brief Tuesday with the state Supreme Court seeking to prevent the measure from getting on the ballot, and Democrats plan one of their own.
For Fernandez, a longtime Republican donor who left the party after the nomination of President Trump in 2016, the All Voters Vote proposal stemmed from finding out he wouldn’t be able to vote in closed primaries after becoming an independent.
“I was shocked I could not vote,” Fernandez said. “The more I looked into it, the more I realized both sides pitch to [voters] hunkered down on the opposite ends of parties. But the majority of voters are neither Republicans or Democrats.”
Steve Vancore, a general consultant to the campaign, said the petition is getting more than 4,000 signatures a day and just passed 700,000, including the necessary numbers in 11 of the required 14 congressional districts.
It will need about 766,000 to qualify for the 2020 ballot, he added, though it still needs to be approved by the state Supreme Court.
The campaign originally had two joint petitions, one for federal races like Congress and Senate and another for state races including governor and Legislature, but concerns over meeting the “single issue” criteria for referendums led them to choose to only focus on state races only.
They also said jungle primaries, rather than just opening up party primaries to independent voters as other states do, was the best way of bringing unaffiliated voters into the mix.
Requiring independent voters to vote in one party’s primary if they want to cast a ballot could be considered “forced association” by the courts, Vancore said. New Jersey’s system, for example, automatically registers an independent voter as a Republican or Democrat if they vote in that party’s “open” primary.
“The devil’s in the details,” Fernandez said. “There are all sorts of legal challenges – state, parties, the Supreme Court – and a jungle primary was the most bulletproof.”
The opposition is already ramping up, more than a year from the potential vote.
State GOP chair Joe Gruters cited a Sept. 30 column he penned for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, in which he wrote, “This is not an open primary, this an abolishment of primaries. … This amendment completely changes what a ‘primary election’ is in Florida — but doesn’t tell voters that.”
State Democratic spokeswoman Caroline Rowland said a proposal “which eliminates the chance for a Democrat to make the ballot is not democratic.”
The petition, she added, “is a thinly veiled attempt by wealthy special interests to stifle democracy, plain and simple.”
Isbell raised several potential issues, including how jungle primaries in California have led to Democratic Party-only general elections that have devastated the Republican Party in that state. In 2016 and 2018, the state’s U.S. Senate elections were both between Democrats.
But other times, he said, Republicans have pulled out wins in heavily Democratic districts due to jungle primaries. Two Republicans faced off in California’s 31st Congressional District in 2012 after three Democrats split the vote in what was considered a safe blue seat.
“If too many from one party run, a district might end up voting between two candidates from a party that might not win another election otherwise,” Isbell said. “You could end up with Northwest Florida having to choose between two Democrats, or an African American-heavy district choosing between two Republicans.”
And while proponents said jungle primaries would reduce the influence of state parties, Isbell said in many ways it only increases it.
“If you’re worried about a split, you start being very heavy-handed,” he said. “State parties come in and say, ‘This is who we want as a standard-bearer.’”
Isbell acknowledged that saying the 2018 election would have been DeSantis vs. Putnam if the primary vote totals were combined doesn’t include the millions of independents who would have been able to vote if it were a jungle primary.
But, he said, a gubernatorial election in Florida should always include a member of both major political parties.
“You can’t rewrite history here,” Vancore said. “Had three million more voters been able to vote, there absolutely would have a different result.”
And, he said, “if all voters have the opportunity to choose, and they choose two Democrats or two Republicans – so what?”
Fernandez echoed Vancore, saying if a jungle primary results in two candidates from one party, “Let it be.”
“It is not my intent or desire to destroy the Republican Party or Democratic Party,” Fernandez said. “But I find that getting attacked by both sides indicates I’m on to something.”