The Thicket at State Legislatures

How Does California’s “Top Two” Primary Law Compare to Primary Elections in Other States?

by Tom Intorcio

On June 8, 54 percent of California's voters approved Proposition 14 to adopt a top two primary. Forty-six percent opposed the measure. It was referred to the ballot by the Legislature and proposed converting the state's partially closed primary to a model patterned after Washington's top two primary. Under the current, partially closed primary system, separate ballots are prepared for each political party. Voters select candidates from their own party's ballot, and the winning candidates are nominated onto the general election ballot. Parties determine whether unaffiliated voters may participate in their primary contests. California is one of 14 states that scheduled a partially closed primary in 2010.

Proposition 14 will move California to a top two primary effective January 1, 2011. Aside from Washington, only Louisiana currently uses this type of primary in partisan legislative elections. In a top two primary, all candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, appear on a single, consolidated ballot. Candidates have the option to add their party "preference" to their name on the ballot, or may decline to state a party preference. Voters may then vote for any candidate, regardless of the voter's and candidate's political party affiliation. The two candidates receiving the most votes advance to the general election. Unlike Washington's version, the new California law does not allow any write-in votes. Partially closed primaries will continue for presidential candidates and party organization offices.

The top two legislative referendum was sponsored by former senator and newly appointed Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado. California's Democratic legislative majority backed the referendum as a concession for then-senator Maldonado's vote in support of Governor Schwarzenegger's 2009 budget compromise. The governor campaigned heavily for Proposition 14, with key support from an atypical coalition of reform activists and business groups. U.S. House Speaker Pelosi, a California Democrat, urged Californians to reject the measure as did leaders of the state's two major parties. She argued that the measure would distort the political process. Californians rejected a similar proposition in 2004.

A Personal Footnote on Sen. Robert Byrd

by Karl Kurtz

Brian's posting about Sen. Robert Byrd as a champion of legislatures, reminded me of a personal anecdote that I had not thought about for a long time.

One of the keys to Sen. Robert Byrd's success was his personal touch. I once had a minor experience with his charm--mixed with a bit of imperiousness. In 1971 I worked as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh's office. At the time Sen. Bayh was traveling around the country as an unannounced presidential candidate and was often not present for Senate votes. Sen. Byrd was majority whip and responsible for keeping track of wayward senators. Around 7 p.m. one evening, when no one else was around, I was in the office and the phone rang. I answered and a voice said, "This is Bobby Byrd, is Birch there?"

"No, Senator, I'm sorry he's not here," I said, tentatively.

"What I need to know is if he will be here tomorrow at 10 in the morning. We need his vote on a bill [I don't remember what it was], so we won't schedule it unless he's going to be here."

"Senator, I'm sorry that I don't know the answer to your question, but I'll be glad to try to find out what I can and get back to you." In fact, I knew that Sen. Bayh was in California but not when he was returning.

"Who am I talking to?," demanded Sen. Byrd.

"This is Karl Kurtz," I said, hesitantly.

"Well, Karl, I expect you to call me back in the next 15 minutes and tell me the answer to my question."

In the next quarter hour, I was able to find out that Sen. Bayh was taking a red-eye back to Washington and would in fact be in town the next morning. When I called Sen. Byrd back to tell him this, he answered the phone himself, thanked me for my answer and went ahead and scheduled the vote.

Sen. Bayh arrived in the office at 9 a.m. the next day, went into his senatorial bathroom to shave and change into a fresh white shirt and tie--all the time talking through an open door to me and other aides about yesterday's campaigning and the coming day in the Senate--and headed off to Sen. Byrd's crucial vote.

Creating a Digital Trail for State Legislatures

by Pam Greenberg

If your legislature uses Twitter, those Tweets, along with every other public tweet since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will now be archived digitally at the Library of Congress.   But will other digital legislative materials in your state be preserved for access in the future? 

The Minnesota Historical Society’s (MHS) Model Technological and Social Architecture for the Preservation of State Government Digital Information Project is working on ways to preserve and provide enhanced online access to legislative materials in digital form.  
This multi-year project, funded through the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), is working to implement a trustworthy information management system and is testing the capacity of different states to adopt and adapt the system for their own use.  The project is exploring ways states can preserve and provide better long-term digital access to bills, committee reports, floor proceedings and other legislative materials.

Explore the MHS site for more information or listen to their podcast featuring Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and Robert Horton, Minnesota Historical Society’s Director of Library, Publications and Collections, speaking about the importance of creating a digital trail for today’s electronic legislatures.  NCSL also has resources available about preservation of digital legislative records.

Robert C. Byrd: A Champion for Legislatures

by Brian Weberg

Robert C. Byrd was many things to many people.  To those of us who live outside West Virginia, we knew him as the consummate congressional insider, tireless in his efforts to deliver federal dollars to his home state, formal and articulate in an old-school political style, sometimes irascible in manner and always strict in his conviction about how government should work.

We "outsiders" did not know as much about his background--his up-by-the-bootstraps rise from poverty, his unquenchable thirst for a formal education denied him in his youth (he earned his law degree in 1963, the only U.S. Senator ever to accomplish this feat while in office), his conversion from Ku Klux Klan membership to pragmatic, sometimes progressive politician.  He was a fiddle player who early in his political career entertained his campaign audiences with a mix of compelling oratory and basic bluegrass.  

Part of his legacy, as cited in his New York Times obituary, will be as "a champion of the legislative branch."  His commitment to the doctrine of separation of powers was well know within political circles.  This quote from the NYT article perfectly summarizes Byrd's commitment to the legislative branch:     

...former Senator Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland, a colleague of 30 years, recalled that Mr. Byrd had taught him how to answer when a constituent asked, “How many presidents have you served under?”        

“None,” was Mr. Byrd’s reply, Mr. Sarbanes said. “I have served with presidents, not under them.

Senator Byrd was, above all, a champion for the people of West Virginia.  A note received by me this week from a long-time West Virginia legislative staffer probably speaks for most from The Mountain State:

Senator Byrd will truly be missed by the citizens of West Virginia.  Whether he knew you or not, when he was here he always took to time to speak, shake hands or whatever.  He loved his family, his country, his state and his constitution.

Robert C. Byrd will be missed by all of us who champion legislatures as the first branch of government.  We need more like him. 

A Box of Pandoras and Other Political Malapropisms

by Karl Kurtz

The late William Passannante, a long-time member of the New York Assembly and a former president of NCSL, once said, "Let's grab that bull by the horns and milk it for all it's worth!"

Politicians are probably no more likely to misuse the English language in amusing ways than any of the rest of us. It's just that so many of their words are recorded and that wordsmiths are listening to them and reporting on their oral missteps.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King, whom "New Mexican" reporter Steve Terrell calls the "Yogi Berra of New Mexico politics," once said of a legislative proposal, "That will open a whole box of pandoras."  Once this image gets in your head, you'll never think of Pandora's box in the same way (or a box of cigars, for that matter).

"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texas children," is often attributed to Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, governor of Texas, 1925-27 and 1933-35. But Benjamin Zimmer, writing for Language Log, has researched this phrase, finding that its origins go back to the 1880s and that there is no documentation that she said it:

...I highly doubt Ma Ferguson ever said it — or if she did, she probably would have said it in self-effacing jest. My guess is that this was a free-floating bit of preacher humor that unfairly got attached to Ma Ferguson, much as Winston  Churchill attracts various apocryphal witticisms.

Seeking Divine Intervention on the Budget in California

Today's New York Times puts a new twist on state legislative budget battles in "Big Budget Gap? Call in the Big Guy":

A day after California lawmakers missed the June 15 deadline to have a budget in place, leaders representing 10 faiths sought “divine wisdom” on Wednesday, offered prayers and demanded that God occupy a seat at the budget negotiating table, joining the so-called Big 5: the governor and the four ranking Senate and Assembly leaders.

“We are calling for a Big 6,” said Sara Nichols of the Center for Spiritual Awareness, a former lobbyist and minister-in-training with the nondenominational religious community that organized the event. “We wanted to bless them and say, ‘They can do it.’ ”

It just may take a while; last year, the budget came in a month overdue, and the year before that, the budget was delivered a record-setting 85 days late, and the year before that — well, suffice to say it is more newsworthy when the $83 billion budget is on time.

This year, the fiscal misery befits Job: a $19 billion deficit, legislative gridlock that has defied even a governor with an action-hero past, that same governor mightily resisting the lame-duck mantle, and an election year that makes compromise — increasingly a four-letter word — harder still. All this while the state comptroller warns that it gets harder to pay bills the more the state pushes past the July 1 start of the fiscal year, just two weeks away.

Proud but Blushing

The Thicket was pink with pleasure when we read a recent issue of the B and G Report by Governing magazine columnists Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene:

We don't want to make other bloggers jealous. There are lots of really good ones out there, but we think our favorite may be The Thicket, from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Regular readers of the B&G Report will likely know this, based on the frequency with which we pass along items we've found there. 

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits from their most recent issue:

Mark Twain is the source for our favorite quote of the last couple of weeks: "Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."

Public Civility Corner. Here's some advice we received from a Florida city councilwoman that seemed like a good approach to dealing with citizens who go into attack mode: "I learned quickly that the only thing I can control in these situations is myself. I remind myself that these citizens would be yelling at whoever was sitting in the seat. I also believe that if they met me standing in line at the grocery store, they would think I was a nice lady. I listen, repeat their concerns back to them to make sure I have a complete understanding of the situation. I then work hard to 'promise little and deliver big.' Many times just letting citizens 'dump their bucket' towards me gets the stress off of them. If I am able to get the situation resolved to their satisfaction, then and only then do I say something that they should call me in the future before it gets so stressful. There have been times I haven't been able to resolve it to their satisfaction, due to city policy or cost. I have had citizens angry that I couldn't do what they wanted and they left angry. Just like sports, you can't win them all."

Barrett and Greene also write a very useful "Implementation of the Recovery Act Blog" for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

A rose from The Thicket to Katherine and Richard.

The First Branch of Government: NCSL Film Rediscovered

by Pam Greenberg

[Note: This article was originally posted in May 2009. Repairing a broken link to the video caused it to be re-published today.]

The Minnesota Legislative Research Library has uncovered a lost treasure: a documentary film about the legislative process written and produced for NCSL in 1976 by  acclaimed documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, whose Academy-award winning films included Nine From Little Rock, A Time for Justice, and The Johnstown Flood. 

The 30-minute documentary film, The First Branch of Government: From Grass Roots to Law, follows former Minnesota Representative Thomas Berg (photo) as he attempts to pass The Metropolitan Land Planning Act. 

Former Representative Ray Faricy converted the film from its original format to DVD and gave it to the library, which in turn converted it to a media file format and made it available to all through the Legislature’s website.

The film begins, “Every year, 7,565 Americans travel to their state capitals to work.  These citizen legislators carry with them the concerns and aspirations of their people—values which will ultimately determine the future of our children, our institutions and the quality of our land.  This is the story of one of them—and the men and women who have joined him in performing this work.”

June 8th Primary Round-up: Incumbents Fare Well

by Tim Storey

With only a handful of exceptions, the vast majority of incumbents survived primary elections on Tuesday in what was the biggest primary day of the year thus far. Eight states, including six with legislative term limits, conducted legislative primaries Tuesday. The term-limited states were California, Maine, Nevada, Montana and South Dakota. Arkansas, another term-limited state, had a primary runoff for a congressional seat. The non-term-limited states with legislative primaries were Iowa, North Dakota and South Carolina.

Term limits are a significant factor because challengers are likely to wait until the seat is vacated by term limits rather than take on incumbents in primaries. This partly explains the low number of primary challenges and defeats in these states.

In addition to the success rate of incumbents in the internal party elections, a number of legislators ran for other offices. Here is a state-by-state overview of notable election outcomes involving state legislators on Tuesday:

New Study of Speaker Pelosi Co-authored by NCSL Alum

by Karl Kurtz

Former NCSL staffer Cindy Simon Rosenthal has recently published a book on Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Ronald Peters, Jr., her colleague at the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma. I haven't had a chance to read Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics yet, so I'll rely on a review by the University of California's Marc Sandalow from the San Francisco Chronicle:

...University of Oklahoma political scientists Ronald M. Peters Jr. and Cindy Simon Rosenthal take a scholarly look at Pelosi's leadership skills in "Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics," the latest biography of the first female speaker.

Peters has been studying speakers for 30 years. Rosenthal has written extensively on women's political leadership and is now the mayor of Norman, Okla....

Peters and Rosenthal view Pelosi in the context of a "New American Politics" that places a premium, they argue, on partisanship, money, organization, technology and diversity. These are elements that define success for a 21st century politician, and the lens through which they assess San Francisco's congresswoman. Their conclusion: Pelosi "is the prototype for the era."

The authors' expertise offers credibility to the notion that Pelosi is among the most powerful speakers ever. She is far more involved in party operations: raising money, developing messages, recruiting candidates. And she has effectively used "control, compromise and sequencing" to move her agenda through the House.

The book will appeal more to scholars and students of Congress than those with an interest in political personalities, which should be apparent from the 22 graphs and charts (Table 3.2: Successful Motions to Recommit.)

Whoa there, Marc: Legislative junkies in The Thicket want to see that table on motions to recommit.

Cindy worked for NCSL in the late 1970s and early 1980s, serving at one time as editor of State Legislatures magazine. She left NCSL to go to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma and went on to have a distinguished career on the faculty of the Carl Albert Center, not to mention her two terms as mayor of Norman.