March madness

Don’t look now but the extraordinarily boring, mostly meaningless, thoroughly negative campaign cycle we think we just completed … well, folks, it’s really not over yet. Thanks to California’s early March primary, the main event is still another whopping eight months away.

Yeah, sure, the politicians and pundits will give us a semi-break, sort of, maybe until later in the summer. But mostly the cash gathering, direct mailing and attack advertising will be back before we know it since most of the candidates we just heard from are still on the runway to the November general election.

No wonder we’re apathetic.

It wasn’t too long ago that—like everybody else in the country—Californians felt puffed up with a sense of patriotism and democratic spirit that came in the wake of the attacks of September 11. But the March campaigns were excruciatingly negative and, ultimately, out-of-touch with what Californians really care about. So it’s no surprise that the politicians and pundits had a tough time making the flag-waving carry over to the ballot box; no surprise that the recent election achieved an all-time low in voter turnout across the state.

As we’ve been reminded many times this past week, the early March primary was intended to give California more power in nominating presidents. We’re all for that. It seemed wrong to have tiny states like New Hampshire picking presidents in decades past while we Californians sat around, with our fifth largest economy on the globe, having no say at all in who’d be nominated. But a March primary without a presidential race was like doing Hamlet without Hamlet.

Senator Ross Johnson, R-Irvine, has introduced a bill in the California Legislature, SB 1975, that would move the primary for all non-presidential elections to September, thereby shortening the time between it and the general election to a mere eight weeks. His plan would be to have the state hold three different elections during presidential years—a presidential primary in March, a September primary for all other elected offices and a general, as usual, in November. The extra cost would be $35 million. That seems a small price to pay to greatly increase our influence in choosing future presidents while, simultaneously, gaining the benefits that a shortened election cycle would bring.

Groups like the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Council have backed Johnson’s bill because they see his legislation as an alternative to campaign finance limits. However, we think a shortened election season should not replace, but accompany improved campaign reforms and finance limits.

The month of March and a non-presidential California primary turned out to be a drastically failed combination. Let’s change it soon, before even more California citizens—however flag-waving—decide to opt out of the voting process once and for all.