Top California Democrat urges change to ‘free-for-all’ primary to keep governor’s mansion blue

The chair of the California Democratic party says he wants to get rid of the state’s idiosyncratic “open primary”, calling it a failure that risks pitting a crowded field of Democratic candidates against each other to the point where a Republican can be elected governor of one of the bluest states in the US. “The current system we have does not work,” Rusty Hicks said in an interview. “It needs to be revised or repealed.” Hicks argued that California’s free-for-all primary, in which voters are free to choose any candidate and the top two vote-winners advance regardless of party, was too prone to quirky outcomes and gamesmanship. He wants a different structure put to voters as early as this November. With the weeks ticking down to the 2 June primary, Hicks is not the only Democrat losing sleep over the statistical possibility that the two leading Republicans for governor, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, could end up in first and second place because the six Democrats left in the race have failed to put enough distance between each other. Such a scenario would be politically disastrous for the party at a time when it is counting on California as a bastion of resistance to the Trump administration and a model for alternative governance at home and abroad. California Democrats enjoy a two-to-one registration advantage over Republicans, hold supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, and have not lost an election for statewide office since 2006. …