[Vision2020] Idaho GOP Musters Election Case

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (June 27, 2010) Spokesman-Review.

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GOP musters election case
Open primary hurts it, party contends; state study differs

Betsy Z. Russell

The Spokesman-Review  Here’s what the Idaho Republican Party considers
proof that the state’s open primaries violate its constitutional rights:
Too many conservative Republicans are losing to moderate Republicans.

In a stack of affidavits and documentation submitted as part of a federal
court case, the party contends that crossover voting by independents and
Democrats in GOP primaries is the only explanation for those victories; in
one case, the party argues that a twice-elected GOP lawmaker, Stan
Bastian, was actually a Democrat in disguise.

Bastian disagrees, and so does the state, which hired two professors to do
extensive studies that concluded Idaho is the most one-party-dominated
state in the nation and there’s no evidence crossover voting has affected
its election outcomes at all. Instead, the current election system has
resulted in a highly polarized state Legislature in which lawmakers
generally vote along party lines, the professors found, and all GOP
lawmakers identified in the lawsuit as “liberals” were actually “in the
mainstream of Republicans in the state of Idaho.”

Targeted in the lawsuit is Idaho’s open primary system, which lets voters
cast ballots without requiring proof of party membership, as in closed
primaries.

The Idaho Republican Party sued in 2008 to try to force closed primaries.

Last fall, U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill ordered the party to prove its
claims that crossover voting by those outside the party was skewing
election results and violating the party’s First Amendment right to free
association; he’s scheduled a trial in October to review both sides’
evidence.

One-term state Rep. Henry Kulczyk, R-Eagle, in an affidavit, contends that
his 2004 primary election loss to Bastian was the doing of the Democrats.
In its own expert reports, submitted by Duke University professor Michael
Munger and conservative activist David Ripley, the party suggests Bastian
was an example of a “Trojan horse” candidate, a case where “a candidate
with core ideological beliefs more appropriate for one party signs up as a
candidate in a primary for the other party.” The state’s experts found no
evidence of that.

Bastian, who served 16 years on the Eagle City Council before being
elected to the House and then going on to be elected to a term in the
state Senate, dismissed Kulczyk’s charge. “I’ve never been a Democrat,” he
said. “I believe that I appealed to more Republican voters than he did.
 I
have a more moderate stance, a more reasonable one, and I think that that
serves the Republican Party well.”

He said he thought the lawsuit was “a mistake,” and that narrowing the
pool of GOP candidates to just those with the most conservative ideology
would hurt a party that’s been highly successful in Idaho. “I would think
the Democrats would be jumping up and down for joy to see the state go in
that direction,” he said.

Bastian said he first ran for the Legislature after people in his
district, including former Eagle Mayor Nancy Merrill – now GOP Gov. Butch
Otter’s state parks director – urged him to take on Kulczyk, nicknamed
“Red-Light Henry” in the district for his frequent “no” votes. “They felt
that he was too far right,” Bastian said. “Some people felt, in fact, that
he was an embarrassment to the 14th District.”

The party’s arguments also cite primary election losses by conservative
candidates Curtis Bowers in 2008, Rod Beck in 2004 and 2006, Dennis
Mansfield in 2002 and 2006, and a failed primary challenge by Gregg Vance
of Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, in 2004 as evidence of crossover voting
skewing elections, along with several others.

Ripley wrote that he found “a prevalent pattern of Democrat crossover
voting designed to produce more liberal members of the Idaho Legislature,”
and said, “Idaho’s current open primary system invites such Democrat
activism in order to impact public policy.”

Bowers, who had been appointed to the state House by Gov. Otter though he
was the third choice of the local Republican Party central committee, made
waves while in office by publishing an article detailing his conspiracy
theories about communists, feminists and gays. When he stood for election
for the first time at the end of his partial term, he was handily defeated
by another Republican.

“During my campaigning, I met many Democrats who specifically told me they
would be voting in our primary for my moderate opponent,” Bowers said in
an affidavit. He added, “Open primaries have affected legislative policies
adopted by the state Legislature. Many of those elected as Republicans
have voting records more aligned with the Democratic Party.”

The two professors, Andrew Martin of Washington University and Kyle
Saunders of Colorado State University, studied every roll-call vote cast
in the Idaho Legislature from 2003 to 2008 and found that, to the
contrary, all of Idaho’s GOP lawmakers voted more conservatively than the
state’s Democratic lawmakers. The only very small overlap was in the
House, where a couple of conservative Democrats overlapped the most
liberal Republicans in voting records.

In the 2005-’06 session, Bastian’s House voting record was more
conservative than six of his GOP colleagues and all of the House
Democrats; in the 2007-’08 Senate, he was near the middle, voting more
conservatively than 11 of his GOP Senate colleagues and than all the
Democrats.

Schroeder, whom the professors showed had the most liberal voting record
of all GOP senators from 2003 to 2008, still voted more conservatively
than every Democratic senator in every session.

The Idaho GOP also submitted a poll conducted in January that showed “a
significant number of Idaho primary voters who do not consider themselves
to be Republicans have voted in GOP primaries.” The state’s experts
discounted the poll, saying its methodology was flawed. The party also
submitted an analysis by Ripley saying crossover voting was evident when
more votes were cast in legislative races than top-of-ticket races, but
the professors said he neglected to consider other factors, making his
conclusion invalid.

“Idaho is the least electorally competitive state in the United States,”
the two professors wrote, noting that both houses of the Idaho Legislature
have been controlled by the Republican Party since 1959. “The open primary
has obviously not been much of a detriment to the Idaho Republican Party.”

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State’s expert report on Idaho Legislature
The state of Idaho commissioned two professors to analyze partisan voting
records in the Idaho Legislature as part of its response to a lawsuit
challenging Idaho’s open primary elections.

http://www.tomandrodna.com/ID_SenHouse_0910Analysis.pdf

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Seeya at the Head Shed tomorrow, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown