Primaries, the down-ballot, and a couple of notes on campaign money
Jim Camden’s “Spin Control” article in the Spokesman yesterday, “Close primary races didn’t have to be,” highlights the primary race for Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands. (Hilary Franz, the current commissioner, decided not to pursue another term and, instead, ran to represent Congressional District 6 in the U.S. House—and lost in the August Primary.)
The second place position in the primary race for WA State Commissioner of Public Lands is undergoing a hand recount of all 1,994,096 ballots statewide. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) holds a decent lead for first position in our “Top-two” primary, but the second place contender, Dave Upthegrove (D) leads Sue Kuehl Pederson (R) by just 51 votes (as of August 20 at 5:17PM) out of 792,549 cast for the two of them combined. That narrow a margin triggers a mandatory hand recount (RCW 29A.64.021(1)(b)(i)).
Mr. Camden makes the point that if only a small percentage of voters who “under-voted” in this race had filled out an oval, a recount likely wouldn’t be required. (In Spokane County alone, 6400 ballots of 144,832 ballots cast were turned in with this race left blank.) I don’t have a solid reference, but I have heard that Republican voters are more inclined to fill in the oval for down-ballot races than are Democratic voters. That tendency certainly could have changed the outcome in this race where (see below) Democrats may be left after the recount with a choice between two Republicans in the November General Election.
More to the point than speaking of undervotes is the fact that only 41% of registered voters in Washington State bothered to cast a primary ballot at all. In Washington State if just another 1% could be motivated to vote in the primary there would be roughly another 48,000 votes mobilized in statewide races. Turnout is powerful. (Typically, around 60% of WA State registered voters cast a ballot in the November General Election in presidential election years like this one. In 2020 it peaked at 69.09%!)
At the risk of rambling, there are more lessons in this race than Mr. Camden explored. There were seven candidates in this primary race for Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands, five “Prefers Democratic Party” and two “Prefers Republican Party” candidates. The votes of the “Prefers Democratic Party” taken together as a round number add up to 1,085,000 whereas the aggregate of the “Prefers Republican Party” votes tally to 815,000. Ms. Pederson (R), who is now effectively tied with the leading “D”, Mr. Upthegrove, raised only $31K in campaign funds, a tiny fraction (5%) of Mr. Upthegrove’s $626K war chest. Clearly, campaign funds are not the determinant here, party loyalty is.
While Mr. Upthegrove, with his vast war chest, took the highest number of votes among the five “Prefers Democratic Party” candidates, the order of finishing among the Democratic contenders wasn’t dependent on money either. Mr. Lebovitz came in third among the Ds, 2.7 percentage points ahead of Mr. Van de Wege in spite of Van de Wege spending 71 times more than Mr. Lebovitz on the primary campaign ($3.6K to $256K).
There are three take-homes. One, pay attention and enjoin others to pay attention to the down-ballot races (but don’t let perplexity keep you from voting. Two, money helps, but it isn’t everything, perhaps especially in running for an office about which most voters may know very little. Three, to a significant degree, voters sort themselves first by their party preference and then choose from among those candidates of their preferred party.
Since even in a “Top-two” primary system voters still tend to choose from among their preferred party’s candidates, the “Top-two” system risks advancing two candidates to the General Election whose prime attribute is that they belong to the party that has fielded the fewest candidates for that position. A ranked choice voting system would be an improvement.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. An earlier post that you can read by clicking here detailed the complicated history that steered us toward our current flawed system. Hint: what we’d been happily doing for many decades was found “unconstitutional” by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court in a decision written by Antonin Scalia in 2000.
P.P.S. All of the data quoted in this post is available at the tips of your fingers (with a little time spent exploring). The voting numbers (for statewide races) are available at sos.wa.gov . All the campaign finance data is available at pdc.wa.gov . The county websites like spokanecounty.org also have voting numbers and information, but, beware, only votes cast by voters registered in that county are tallied at the county sites. That is, in a statewide race or a legislative district race that crosses county boundaries the tallied votes are only those cast in that county.