Californians Explore 'Jungle Primaries'

By Ronald D. Elving

California's journey into the dark unknown of the "jungle primary" became official March 26, when voters adopted a ballot initiative putting all candidates together on one primary ballot. But in a sense the journey began back in 1992.

On election night that year, a San Francisco TV station invited Republican Rep. Tom Campbell to provide commentary on air with University of California political scientist Bruce Cain. The two chatted on camera as Bill Clinton got elected president and California sent two Democratic women, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, to the Senate.

Earlier in the year, Campbell himself had been a Senate candidate, losing narrowly in the primary to conservative commentator Bruce Herschensohn. Boxer, the most liberal of the Democratic contenders, got past Herschensohn in November with a plurality of 48 percent.

Cain could not resist asking Campbell whether the sight of Boxer slipping by Herschensohn bothered him. And the congressman could not resist admitting that it did. A lot.

"I can still see the look on his face," says Cain.

The primary defeat in June 1992 was a formative experience for Campbell, the Stanford professor with a Harvard law degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Campbell became convinced that some of the 3 million Democrats who voted that day might have voted for him if the rules had allowed. And that was not even to count the 1.5 million independents barred from voting in either primary.

Californians have often wondered why the largest state in the union has to have a House delegation dominated by the extremes of either party. For people who are pleased to be called moderates, choosing the most Republican Republican to do battle with the most Democratic Democrat is a little too much like life in the Balkans.

Until 1959, California had a system of cross-filing under which candidates in one party also filed for the ballot in the other. This allowed well-known incumbents to pick up votes on both sides. Some, such as Gov. Earl Warren in his first re- election campaign in 1946, even won the nomination of both parties.

But while candidates could draw votes from either side, voters could pick only from one party menu or the other - never from both.

"The candidates could cross party lines but the voter had to stay in place," recalls Eugene Lee, the retired director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. "This is the reverse."

The "jungle primary" idea has been in place for generations in Washington state. Voters there especially like the freedom to choose from one party's offerings for governor and from the other party's for senator.

Lee was among the original sponsors of the open primary proposition (Proposition 198) this year. Campbell was another, lending not only his signature but his entree to such benefactors as electronic firm moguls David Packard (who died on the day of the balloting) and Bill Hewlett.

In 1976, a version of the open primary failed to make the ballot. In 1983, after a hyper-partisan round of redistricting, California pollster Mervin Field found two-thirds of those interviewed liked the idea of the open primary. But talk of a ballot initiative went nowhere.

This time, thanks to Campbell and others, the idea got on the ballot. And, while the campaign in its favor was low-profile, the vote in its favor was nearly 3-to-2. Cain says it passed like "a sneaky fastball on the inside corner of the plate," unnoticed and unexamined by most.

Part of its appeal may have been its antagonists. State GOP Chairman John Herrington bemoaned the appeal to "the mindless middle." Democratic Party campaign adviser Bob Mulholland talked of mobilizing millions of party faithful to make mischief in the party's presidential primary.

But examples of such skulduggery by voters are hard to find. Far more common are the instances of politicians crossing party lines to give money to candidates they think will help their own designs.

The parties also warned that the open primary would escalate the cost of campaigns. Candidates now target their audiences carefully to save money, mailing only to proven primary participants in their party.

But Lee professes a blissful lack of concern on this score. "Election costs are driven up by givers' willingness to give," he says. "Politicians will always spend all they can get."

In the end, Lee argues, the rights of the parties should never be upheld over those of the electorate itself.

"Who are the parties? The central committees? The officers? Or are they the people who vote in their primaries? If it's the latter, I would say a majority of both Republicans and Democrats voted in favor of Prop 198."

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