All the recent problems with California’s jungle primary were apparent from the start.
As Tuesday's California primary approaches, both parties are filled with a specifically jungle kind of dread. Democrats fear that their overflow of candidates who are seeking to turn red congressional districts blue will split the vote so many ways that Republicans—fewer of whom are seeking those offices—will finish one-two and move on to the November runoff. Republicans fear that Democrats will finish one-two in the races for statewide office, given that there are roughly nine registered Democrats for every five registered Republicans in the state. And that if there are no Republicans running for statewide office in November, Republican turnout will be low, imperiling their hold on those congressional seats unless they lock those seats up next Tuesday.
But none of this should come as a surprise. Right after the 2014 primaries—the second conducted under jungle primary rules—I predictedjust such a clusterfuck in an op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times. I pointed out that one heavily Democratic congressional district in the Inland Empire had elected a Republican in 2012 only because each of the four Democrats who sought that office finished behind the two Republicans on the primary ballot, even though the four Democrats amassed more votes, so that the two Republicans were the only choices on the November ballot. (The jungle primary doesn’t allow November write-ins.) Two years later, the chastened Democrats were able to clear the field for the Democrat who two years earlier had run ahead of the other three—and in a testament to just how Democratic the district really was, the rookie Republican congressman didn’t even stand for re-election.
Somehow, the lessons of that 2012 race never registered very prominently with California activists. Even now, as Democrats are frantically scrambling to avoid the very same kind of disaster next Tuesday, references to this grim antecedent seldom come up in print or conversation.
I give the jungle primary ten years. Voters created it by initiative in 2010. With both Democrats and Republicans living in dread of its consequences, I expect voters to repeal it in 2020.
