West Virginia Blue
The Best Blogging Community in West Virginia
Democratic politics, progressive policies, the good life and free living in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia.
Big Daddy Sen. Robert C. Byrd

WV GOP looks to ban independents from their primary

by: Carnacki

Wed Feb 25, 2009 at 17:25:19 PM EST


In what surely must be a sign that the Republican Party's tent continues to shrink to only the most radical rightwingers, the West Virginia GOP is looking to ban independents from voting in their primaries.

From the Intelligencer:

Non-Republicans in West Virginia have been voting in state GOP primaries for more than 20 years, but now party leaders are re-examining that privilege.

State GOP Chairman Douglas McKinney is to appoint a committee this week charged with studying whether Republican primaries in West Virginia should be closed to non-Republican voters.

The move follows a recent meeting of the West Virginia State Executive Committee, during which some members expressed that the party's policy should be changed.

It was just last year that state Democrats opened their primary to non-Democratic voters - a decision that mirrored established GOP policy and was believed to have a positive effect for Democrats in the state in 2008.

Democrats continue to grow in West Virginia as are the number of independents. It worked out well for the Dems to have the indies join in the primary, a good move by Nick Casey, and if the GOP wants to send the signal to independents they're not wanted, I'm sure the Dems will be happy to work with them.

West Virginia GOP executive director Gary Abernathy sees the problem:

"But we have to consider ... now that the Democrats are allowing other people to vote in their primary, do we only want Republicans to vote in ours?" he said.

Abernathy noted there are two schools of thought on the matter.

"Some feel only Republicans should vote because they are the only ones who contribute and work for the party," he said. "Those in favor believe an open primary involves more people in the process. They believe the voter might stick with the same candidate in the general election, and eventually join the party."

But as the Republican Party both in the state and nationally gets further marginalized it moves further to the right because moderates have already seen they're not wanted by the right wingers. The party belongs to the radical right and they don't want it spoiled by those who might think differently.
Carnacki :: WV GOP looks to ban independents from their primary
Tags: , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email
WV GOP looks to ban independents from their primary | 15 comments
Agree/Disagree (4.00 / 1)
Actually it has less to do with right-wingers wanting full control as much as it has to do with the upper party leadership wanting to tighten control. The state GOP elite have been working for the last two years to tighten their control. They did this to fellow party members by the way the organized their primary convention last year. They only care if you donate money.
that was quite the snake show (4.00 / 1)
and even after they got the "faithful" together in one location, they did not like the first voting round results. too democratic, if i remember correctly. their state convention happened before the primary, which was the most bizarre. they might as well have locked the indies out. all i have is enthusiasm, so i would never be able to pay the new republican "poll tax".

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance
[ Parent ]
And if they don't fear an ideological tug towards the center... (0.00 / 0)
from increased participation by independents, they should.

But that may just be my political optimism talking.

It's interesting that our Democratic Party here in WV resisted the opening to independent voters for years.

There was a smorgasbord of reasons, I'm sure, but one of them certainly was a concern that independents would exert a rightward pull.

It is, in my view, to Joe Manchin's credit that he insisted on opening the primaries to independent voters after he captured his party's gubernatorial nomination in 2004 and appointed Nick Casey the state chairman.

Joe certainly had a compelling case. As I recall, he made the familiar one about Republicans building relationships with independent voters because of their open primary, but he could also cite the magnitude of his loss to Charlotte Pritt in the 1996 primary and her subsequent loss that fall to a genially likeable fossil but a fossil nevertheless.

However, the national mood quite obviously is different today than it was in 2004 or even 1996 (yes, Clinton was president but Gingrich ruled the Congress). And as the GOP flounders and finds itself being (in essence) triangulated by a "bi-partisn" Obama into increasingly marginal status ideologically and demographically as a regional party, an opening to independents certainly risks being pulled away from their "safe" harbor in shallow right-wing waters. Or maybe the metaphor ought to be that their afraid of losing their Linus safety blanket.

I have no empirical data to back this up, and am readily prepared to concede that I'm wrong, but, at least anecdotally these days, quite a few of the indpendents I know are to the left of many of the so-called moderate and conservative West Virginia Democrats I know.

That's not surprising, though. The independents I allude to have more of a working-class consciousness. They are open to the populist discontent that's pervasive in the country today.

A caveat here, however, is that in times of economic upheaval in America, grassroots populism is Janus-faced. Those populist tides flow right as forcefully as they flow to the left. And independents generally tend not to have the ideological moorings of traditional Democrats or Republicans. This is one of those examples of why, in the long run, progressives may look back someday in despair on this period and lament the weakness of unions today and the general lack of comparable left-leaning institutions in contemporary America. It's certainly not the 1930s. And it's not even the 1970s in that regard, either.  

As to populist tides in the '30s versus today... (0.00 / 0)
my point is we have no equivalent to Huey Long, but we do have our Father Couglins, many of them and with mass market soapboxes (Rushblow, Innanity and O'Reilly to name just a few).
[ Parent ]
But then, in West Virginia, there's also a very practical (0.00 / 0)
consideration here: There are very few counties in which a vote in the Republican Party has any meaning at all.

The action in the primaries at all levels, from courthouse offices to statewide offices, is all in the Democratic Party.

Hell, there's always someone worth enthusiastically voting against, and on our Democratic side of the ballot, it's frequently a target-rich environment.

which is why the EP pushed open Dem primaries (4.00 / 1)
we have become the crown jewel of the state Repug and they run unopposed for some delegate seats. the point of primary putting the name in the indies mind early is a good one.

consolidaiton of media in markets in corporate interest is a problem. we do not have cable and all the dozens of channels. i have never thought that print was liberal, even the WaPo or NYT.

and i do think that rushbo and sean hatey have a monopoly of the high powered AM that drowns out the possibility of commercial success of other formats. the FCC vote is going on in the Senate now. Tell me what that has to do with DC voting rights.  

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

[ Parent ]
That's a feather in the eastern panhandle's Democrat cap, and ... (0.00 / 0)
let's be honest: Resistance to open primaries in the WV Democratic Party had more to with regionalism than ideology.

In my opinion, the resistance to it was less about fear of the party moving right, it was about Southern WV, already losing population dramatically, losing its grip on the party.

[ Parent ]
Hence the dishonest state Senate districts (4.00 / 1)
that SCOTUS passed on. The next census will bring back this fight, and it is worth fighting. An adjustment to the federal CD would be nice, too, but that will be fought. We are a lot closer to Mollahan in Morgantown, than any Kanawha candidate for WV-02.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance
[ Parent ]
In other Primary News: Indiana (0.00 / 0)
The Indiana Assembly is starting to get the right idea:

http://thenewsdispatch.com/mai...

Not only should Indiana consider moving up its place in the primary calendar, but they should consider challenging Iowa's primacy by going before (or at least simultaneously with) Iowa. If enough states join Indiana (namely such states as Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, and Florida), then the RNC and DNC will have little choice but to deny Iowa its status as kingmaker.

And it will indeed take many states to challenge the current party system. As we saw in 2008, two states weren't enough to take on such entrenched interests. If Indiana makes the right decision -- and enough states follow suit -- we'll be better on our way to perfecting a system which now tells the majority of us that we are 2nd-class to the citizens of Iowa.

Will
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

So, Hillary & Huckabee would have been (0.00 / 0)
the nominees? No thanks. Yeah, I know. It was close in Indiana between Clinton & Barack in late April, but if Indiana had been first I doubt the margin would have so razor thin.

As a Democrat, I like Iowa (caucus) going first and a blue-collar state like New Hampshire (regular primary) going second. Iowa first first for the Dems because it showcases grassroots activism.

Think back to 1968. McCarthy didn't actually win Iowa, yet he symbolically won Iowa and thus forced Johnson from the race.

And, no. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want the state that is represented by Blue Dogger Supreme, Evan Bayh, having that much say in the who is the Democratic nominee.

If there are demographic numbers for Indiana showing the Hoosier state to reflect the nation's changing demographics, which now favor the national Democratic Party and will so even more in 2012, then I'll be willing to maybe change my mind.

Consider this: first-time voters in 2008 were born as recently as 1990. Four years from now, they'll have been born in 1994. That's just one key demographic indicator.

How does Indiana stack up that way?

[ Parent ]
Ooops! I'm badly wrong there. It was New (0.00 / 0)
Hampshire that was LBJ's Waterloo in '68. Don't think Iowa was Iowa back then.

Still, something about Indiana moving up I don't like.

Part of that I'll readily admit is bias: No Iowa in 2008, and no President Obama in 2009.

And I just not sure Indiana reflects the demographics changes that are trending our way. Sounds to me like those proposals to DLC the party to the center or even center right back in the Reagan era (1980--2008?) when, except for Clinton and a few years when Democrats controlled the Congress, the right governed the country with an iron fist.

[ Parent ]
anger about Ron Paulites (4.00 / 1)
There were a bunch of folks who "joined" the Republican Party to push for Ron Paul as President.

I view this move by W.Va. Republican Party as also being part of their disdain for the libertarian wing that caused such headaches to central party planners during last year's Presidential convention charade.

the first round convention vote scared "them" (4.00 / 2)
Barry Goldwater, western libertarian, did not care what consenting adults did behind closed doors.
OR what they smoke.

The "Chrsitianist" theocons would have no power structure to continue to man the catapults behind their glass houses, and the Republican Party would have to get its hand out the the church collection plate.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

[ Parent ]
Very true, Clem. They tried to stack the deck for Romney, their (4.00 / 1)
idea of a Mormon JFK--wealthy, big state cred (MA & MI) and then they got outsmarted by a likeable Baptist yokel newcomer from Arkansas.

Was funny as hell, and yes indeed there was a definite surge for Ron Paul. All of sudden the upper-middle-class dons of the WV Republican Party got an up close look at the right's version of what they like to call "hippies."

That, too, was funny as hell.  

[ Parent ]
Libertarian (4.00 / 2)
Republican that smokes wacky tabaccy

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance
[ Parent ]
WV GOP looks to ban independents from their primary | 15 comments
Premium Advertiser

blog advertising is good for you

Welcome!

( Home )
Menu

Click here to join!

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?

About
- About WVaBlue.com
- Send us news at wvablue@gmail.com
-  Subscribe in a reader

Advertisers


Support WVaBlue

Active Users
Currently 0 user(s) logged on.

Search




Advanced Search

Current CO2 level in the atmosphere

Proudly displaying the West Virginia Red, White, Blue, Green and Orange.

Join me at http://www.350.org


WVa Democrats
  • Sen. Jay Rockefeller
  • Sen. Joe Manchin III
  • Joe Manchin for Senate (2010/2012)
  • Rep. Nick Rahall (WV-03)
  • Secretary of State Natalie Tennant
  • Auditor Glen Gainer
  • Treasurer John Perdue
  • Agriculture Commissioner Gus Douglass
  • Attorney General Darrell V. McGraw
  • Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, acting as Gov.
    		•
    Declared Candidates
  • Jeff Kessler
  • John Perdue
  • Natalie Tennant
  • Earl Ray Tomblin
  • Rick Thompson
    		•

    Copyright 2011 West Virginia Blue
    Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified.
    This site exists thanks to financial support from BlogPAC, dedicated volunteers and participation by members of this community. The views expressed at West Virginia Blue belong solely to their respective authors.
    Powered by: SoapBlox