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By Matthew Kredell
For the first time in state history, November’s ballot for the vacant U.S. Senate seat in California featured two candidates – Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez – from the same political party. On Dec. 2, the USC Schwarzenegger Institute at the Price School of Public Policy brought together top political scholars and experts, including the campaign managers for each Senate candidate, to discuss how the Golden State’s top-two open primary system shaped the historic race.
“At the institute, we believe that policy is best guided by data and facts,” said Bonnie Reiss, the Schwarzenegger Institute’s global director. “We also believe that the work of researchers is enhanced when they get people from the field to come in. Both benefit from hearing from each other, and that’s what today is about.”
Schwarzenegger, who spoke to the audience from Austria through a live video feed, explained that he believed the gridlock he experienced between parties when he served as California’s governor was caused by a primary system that forced Republicans to go more to the right and Democrats more to the left in order to get nominated, then not being able to work together when they got to Sacramento.
As governor, Schwarzenegger helped lead the charge to get political reforms on the ballot in 2010 to stop gerrymandering and move to an open primary.
“In order for us to have a better system in California, we felt very adamant that we should have open primaries,” Schwarzenegger said. “I think you will hear during these discussions that the system now is much better. The Schwarzenegger Institute is here to talk about these very important issues such as political reform.”
More than 4,000 people watched a live webcast of the event on Schwarzenegger’s Facebook page.
In the academic panel, USC Schwarzenegger Institute Faculty Fellow Christian Grose outlined the power of endorsements in the U.S. Senate race; NYU Professor Andrew Sinclair examined whether voters were more or less informed about the candidates; Washington University’s Betsy Sinclair spoke about traits to distinguish candidates from the same party; and Jackie Salit, president of IndependentVoting.org, explained the power of independent voters in the top-two system.
“The cues that voters usually use are to vote based on party lines,” Grose said. “In this case, there is no party difference and very little ideological difference between the candidates. However, voters seem to draw distinctions from traits and endorsements. In general, voters have to try to search and evaluate to use different information other than the political party of the candidate when casting a vote for the top-two primaries.”
Bill Carrick, who ran Sanchez’s campaign, and Sean Clegg, the strategist for now Senator-elect Harris, discussed ways they thought the top-two system made their jobs more difficult and offered improvements that could be made in those areas. As an example, the strategists noted how the campaigns were underfunded, leading to fewer paid ads and media attention.
“There were a lot of Democratic donors who basically said, ‘This is a great outcome, we’re going to have a Democratic U.S. Senator. I’m going to help Hillary or have a fundraiser for an out-of-state candidate who is trying to pick up a Republican seat for the Democrats,’” Carrick said.
Among the changes that Clegg suggested was removing party affiliations from the ballots, like in many local elections, so the candidates are truly running as individuals.
While Carrick said he was still agnostic about the top-two system, Clegg said he thought it allowed Harris to put together a coalition of which hadn’t been seen before and to get a lot of Republican votes, winning 25 of 26 counties where Republicans outnumber Democrats.
“Did the open primary create a context and opportunity for a progressive Democrat who hails from San Francisco to put together a diverse, cross-cultural, geographical, tri-partisan coalition?” Clegg asked. “Absolutely.”