Features July 8, 2010, 11:01AM EST

Steve Peace: California Revolutionary

(page 3 of 3)

Governance in California got appreciably harder in 1978 when voters approved Proposition 13, which mandated a two-thirds vote in the legislature to raise taxes and also set limits on property tax increases. Since then, California voters have piled on the mandates, making the job of budgeting even harder by setting unsustainable levels of spending on education, early childhood development, wildlife protection, and more. In prosperous times, with an economy as powerful and diverse as California's, it is marginally possible to satisfy all these interests. In hard times it is not.

For 21 of the last 30 years, including 2010, California has begun its fiscal year without a spending plan. This year's budget deficit is projected to be $19.1 billion, putting the world's eighth-largest economy in danger of not being able to pay for office supplies and special education programs. As budget problems have intensified, so has political extremism. "Sacramento," says Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant and publisher of the California Target Book, the bible for state political junkies, "has become the Disneyland for ideologues."

The hope of Prop 14 advocates is that it will support centrist lawmakers who will "do long-term economic development planning rather than year-to-year budget battles," says Samuel Garrison, vice-president of public policy for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which backed the initiative. "It promotes pragmatic candidates who are building consensus and are better focused on attracting and retaining businesses."

Peace says that Prop 14 is about more than improving the business climate—that it'll get regular citizens to believe that things can get done. Political scientists, however, aren't so sure it will be such a breakthrough. "A lot of this is wishful thinking," says Barbara Sinclair, professor emeritus of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles. Weakening the parties won't necessarily mean smarter, more responsible, or even more middle-of-the-road officeholders, she says. If top-two elections produce lawmakers with a hodgepodge of allegiances, "it would make it more difficult for government to function."

That's how many Democrats and Republicans see it, too. Divided over almost everything else, they tend to unite in disdain for open primaries. "It isn't going to do anything but get more business-friendly Democrats in office," says John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party. Mark Standriff, a spokesman for the California Republican Party, says the GOP is consulting with other parties about a legal challenge.

A decade ago the state's political parties succeeded in overturning a similar measure. In 1996, voters approved an open primary initiative, only to have it thrown out when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state's Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Peace & Freedom Parties, which claimed their rights to free association were violated because nonparty members helped choose party candidates in the first round of voting.

Under that legislation, those who moved to the general round were the top winners from each party, not of the total vote. Peace's legal experts, however, have modeled Prop 14 after a Washington State law that uses a different approach: A primary candidate may identify a party preference but not his or her registration, so voters can't know with certainty if a candidate is allied with a particular party. In 2008 the U.S. high court, citing that distinction, upheld the Washington law.

Meanwhile, Peace says, he's hoping Prop 14 fever spreads. Louisiana and Washington have primaries where the two candidates with the most votes advance, and if California's amendment survives legal challenges, others may follow; a Michigan lawmaker has introduced a bill to make his state next.

Even if Prop 14 meets legal resistance, Peace's group continues to function as a democracy lab. Among several new ideas for California: shrinking the campaign season by moving primaries from June to September and banning fundraising when the legislature is meeting, which it does about seven months a year.

The motivation to keep the political movement going, Peace says, is supplied by his first grandchild, a 9-month-old boy. "His odds of living in a democratic society are no better than 50 percent," Peace says. "In the last 50 years there has been a steady march away from the fundamental principles of democracy, which is compromise. Instead we're moving towards the Third World model of democracy, where, if you don't like the outcome, you pick up your guns—literally or figuratively." At the very least, it could provide the underpinnings for the next Killer Tomatoes plot.

Elgin is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau. Palmeri is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Los Angeles bureau. Follow him on Twitter @chrispalmeri.

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