Give Me Party or Give Me Death

Fresh out of the cage fight that was the California budget debate, in which Democrats and Republicans waged an ideological battle that pushed the state to the brink of collapse, comes new hope for the passage of open primaries.

As we’ve mentioned previously, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated the idea of open primaries after he scored a win in November with a ballot measure designating  an independent body to redraw congressional lines that have been gerrymandered so badly that only a couple seats in the Golden State were even legitimately contested in the last election.

Now comes a sponsor for completely open primaries, in which any voter - regardless of party identification - could vote for any candidate. Instead of Republicans only voting for Republicans and Democrats only voting for Democrats in spring elections, which guaranteed that a Donkey always faced off against an Elephant in the fall, an open primary would put all candidates, regardless of party, on the same ballot.

In this system, the top two vote-getters would proceed to the general election. That means two Democrats could wind up squaring off against each other, or two Republicans. Or, perhaps, one or two Independents could make a strong run and break through.

As both parties are flat-out terrified of this idea, it’s appropriate that the sponsor of the ballot measure, which would go before voters in 2010, is Rep. Abel Maldonado out of Santa Barbara, the deciding vote who crossed his Republican party lines to get the budget deal passed.

Republicans have, of course, now targeted Maldanado as a fink for breaking from the Republican family in the budget talks - no matter that hundreds of thousands of jobs were on the line. He broke the cardinal rule: loyalty to party above everything else.

Reaction was swift. Just hours after the assemblyman cast his vote for the budget, Republican political consultant Matt Cunningham set up a Facebook group: “Never Elect Abel Maldanado to Anything, Ever Again.”

And Tom Del Beccaro, vice chairman of the state GOP, made clear how dearly all the career politicians want to maintain the status quo:  “The two party is as old as politics itself. It’s human nature to have rivalries, politically, in sport, and you can’t legislate around human nature,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s called  social experimentation–and it doesn’t work.”

To think this guy could elected dog-catcher saying such completely disingenuous nonsense.

Now it seems Maldanado’s outsider status has emboldened him to actually do the right thing–as he’ll have to depend on more Democrats and Independents to get reelected next time around.