Louisiana GOP Backs Party Primaries: Group to Target Federal Vote First

Baton Rouge, LA, Morning Advocate ^ | 12-12-04 | Shuler, Marsha

[Theodore R.]

La. GOP backs party primaries

Group to target federal vote first

By MARSHA SHULER mshuler@theadvocate.com Capitol news bureau

State Republicans voted Saturday to support a return to party primaries in federal elections, after abandoning the idea of including state and local elections as well. Meanwhile, the Republican State Central Committee also decided to investigate moving Louisiana's next presidential primary to February 2008 to bring more attention to the state and its voters' preference.

The business marked the first meeting of the Republican leadership since the party scored major victories in fall elections.

Party leaders rejoiced and there were plenty of "thank yous" to go around from winning GOP politicians -- including U.S. Sen.-elect David Vitter and Congressmen-elect Charles Boustany of Lafayette and Bobby Jindal of Kenner.

Vitter became the first elected Republican U.S. senator from Louisiana. The GOP also holds five of seven U.S. House seats. "It's the best, most successful election season I can remember. 2004 was one of the Grand Old Party's finest moments," party chairman Roger Villere said.

With fall elections past, party members started looking ahead to potential changes before the next big elections.

Bringing the most fractious debate was a resolution by Ruth Ulrich of Monroe that urged Republican state legislators to push a proposed law to end the state's unique-in-the-nation "open primary" system.

Under the system, all candidates for an office run on the same ballot with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, moving to a runoff.

Adopted about 30 years ago, the move ended party primaries in which Democrats ran against fellow Democrats and Republicans against Republicans with the winners in each field squaring off in a general election.

Party members clearly were divided, ultimately settling on an "incremental" step urged by party treasurer Charlie Buckles of Lafayette to start with federal elections. The vote was 96 to 18 in support.

Buckles said that also would stop Louisiana from having to have an extra December election for congressional runoffs.

State Rep. Charles Lancaster, R-Metairie, who is chairman of the House committee dealing with election laws, said there is more support for moving to a party primary for federal elections than he's seen in the past. "We ought to ride it if we can," he said.

Lancaster favors the move for federal, state and local elections. Today's system, he said, "gets us at each other's throats instead of at the Democrat's throats."

Before the vote, committee members pointed to recent elections for examples of the pros and cons of abandoning the "open primary" system.

"David Vitter is an excellent example of when we get behind one candidate we can win," Ulrich said. "All the endorsement problems, in my opinion, would be solved when we take it to the Republican voters to decide who the Republican is going to be."

Various Republican factions supported differing congressional candidates, causing hard feelings and, some contend, lost elections.

The state party executive committee's endorsement of 3rd Congressional District candidate Billy Tauzin III prompted the most outcry from the GOP rank-and-file. State Sen. Craig Romero, a New Iberia Republican, also was in the race. Democrat Charles Melancon of Napoleonville won that election.

Chris Leopold of St. Bernard said Vitter won with a "great campaign." But Leopold said if there had been a "closed primary" and Democrats had elected a conservative Democrat to run against him, "we would have had problems."

John Treen of Metairie said the current elections system has helped Republican voter registration grow because voters no longer have to worry about being shut out in local elections with no Republicans running.

"It (party primaries) will stop our voter registration switches in the areas in which we are now weak," he said.

In other action, party leaders authorized creation of a committee to look into moving the state's presidential preference primary to February instead of on "Super Tuesday" -- the second Tuesday in March. The committee will report its findings in early 2006, according to the resolution.

Mike Bayham, who sponsored the resolution, said Louisiana holds its election on the same day as Texas and Florida.

"We may get a pit stop from a presidential candidate traveling between Tampa and Austin or Houston. If we are going to get attention from a presidential candidate in 2008, I think we should move it up a little bit," Bayham said.

[Flux Capacitor]

I'm all for this. It's long past time for Louisiana to adopt a halfway-sane election system.

The Democrats will never go for it (the whole purpose of the open-primary system as originally conceived was to shut Republicans out of elections altogether), but they might want to think twice. The system did allow Charlie Melancon a win this year, and got Rodney Alexander in in '02 (though of course he ended up switching to the GOP anyway, heh heh).

But it also probably cost the Dems the Senate race this year. Though he was a very strong candidate, this is still Louisiana, and the only reason Vitter won outright was because he was the only Republican in the race, while this time the Democrats carved one another up as the Republicans did in '02 against Mary Landrieu.

I believe Vitter still would have won the day in the end, but the Dems would have been in a stronger position in a head-to-head race -- not that I want the Dems in a stronger position; the point is, they can no longer count on their own system -- indeed, it backfired on them -- and I just want to see us adopt a normal process.

-Dan