Incumbents V. Election Reform

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Only 30 of the 202 incumbents seeking reelection in the New York state Legislature faced major-party primary challenges last week, and 27 of them won. Come November, 51 members of the Legislature, or almost a quarter, will face no opponent from a major party, meaning that on Election Day millions of New Yorkers will find little option other than the incumbent on the ballot.


This is not just a New York phenomenon. It is a nationwide epidemic of entrenched incumbents. This year, only 29 of 435 seats in the House of Representatives are listed as competitive in Congressional Quarterly – a new low. The Economist, in a recent issue, compares our country’s 99% incumbent re-election rate unfavorably to North Korea. We’ve got a problem in our democracy. It’s past time we acknowledge it and then do something about it.


That’s why California’s ballot Proposition 62 might just be the most important election other than president this year. Prop. 62 would bring an open, all-party primary to the state, giving all voters the ability to vote for the candidate of their choice, regardless of party. The initiative is being supported by moderates from both parties in the hopes that electoral reform can wrest control of the selection process from the rigid professional partisans. Two of its leading backers are a Republican former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, and a former Democratic congressman and Clinton chief of staff, Leon Panetta.


But even in Sacramento, where the Democrat and Republican leaders were so dysfunctional that a governor was recalled, it shouldn’t surprise cynics to discover that the one thing the California party bosses have been able to agree upon in years is that this election reform must be stopped at all costs. Why? Because the system protects those in power. As the San Jose Mercury News recently editorialized, “All but a half dozen incumbents are a cinch to return to Sacramento as long as they keep breathing until Election Day.”


An impressive array of dirty tricks and a steady stream of lawsuits have been deployed against the ballot referendum. One such stunt is a superficially similar Prop. 60, which would undercut reforms. The lawsuits challenge everything from the language used on the ballot – opponents are lobbying to have the word “open” primary stricken from the description, in favor of the smothering-sounding “blanket” primary – to attempts to trap the referendum’s sponsors under a mountain of red tape. Still the effort chugs on under the popular desire for election reform from moderates and swing voters.


“Voters here are feeling dominated by partisans at both ends of the political spectrum,” explained Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of a nonpartisan voter guide, the California Target Book, in an interview with Roll Call. “That’s the queasy feeling that helped the recall of Governor Gray Davis. If a recall of the Legislature had been on the same ballot, voters would have booted them out, too. There’s a sense that the system is too broken and too controlled.”


This frustration is growing and turning into a broader voter revolt. Washington State is voting on a similar open-primary measure this year as well, with Oregon looking to join the open primary reform movement with a ballot referendum in 2006.


The progressive-era reform of direct democracy in the form of ballot referendum was never allowed to take hold in New York. But here in New York, there is a growing sense that the political system is broken and controlled as well and a voter revolt against the entrenched incumbents in Albany is brewing.


One of the hopeful signs to emerge from this year’s primary was the defeat of an incumbent Democratic assemblyman, David Sidikman, at the hands of a Glenn Cove city councilman, Charles Lavine, who campaigned as part of a “Fix Albany” effort organized by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi. This was a direct shot across the bow of the increasingly unpopular Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Even New York Democratic primary voters – traditionally a status-quo minded lot – are getting fed up with the corrupt bargain that goes by the name “three men in a room.” The Brennan Center at New York University’s recent designation of Albany as the most dysfunctional state capital in the nation only sped up voter frustration. Expect the 2006 governor’s race to be a referendum on Albany reform.


In the meantime, reformers in New York and across the nation can look to the progress of California’s Proposition 62 for inspiration. In California, as in New York, the problem corroding our state capitals is systemic – and so the system must be changed. Perhaps in New York the next step is removing the leadership in Albany or, as the former governor, Mario Cuomo suggests, convening an early state constitutional convention. Neither party has taken the need for real election reform seriously; now it is in our hands.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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