CALIFORNIA VOTERS weary after five consecutive years of statewide elections since 2002 will finally get a breather this year. But if Sacramento legislators who are loath to give up any power get their way, we'll be going back to the ballot box in 2008 with \o7three\f7 more election cycles.
The state Senate has taken the first steps toward creating an early presidential primary for the Golden State. Moving the California presidential primary from June 3, 2008, to Feb. 5 will presumably give Californians a bigger role in determining who becomes the next president of the United States.
But voters beware! The trade-off for picking the next president will be losing our ability to have any competitive elections for the next four years.
Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez don't much care who the next president is -- they just want us to give them four more years in their safe legislative districts. Competitive November elections in California have become as distant a memory as UCLA basketball championships.
To get the early primary deal done, next February's ballot would contain two political reform measures. One idea, popular with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and good-government types, would take the power to redraw legislative district lines away from the legislators. The other idea, popular with incumbent elected officials, would extend voterimposed term limits, allowing sitting assemblymen and senators to serve an additional four to six years.
If you wonder why these measures cannot be on the regular June 2008 ballot, you're missing the point of the whole early primary exercise. The deadline to file for office for the June election falls in March. Sitting incumbents whose terms are scheduled to end in 2008, like Nunez, need a ballot measure approved and certified before that March deadline. Thus, we get an early presidential primary with a ballot initiative attached.
In the past, California has held a consolidated primary -- in which we pick our nominees for president, Congress and the state Legislature all at the same time. These primaries have bounced all over the calendar from June to March and back again. But without an additional round of voting, Nunez and friends cannot keep their jobs.
Two years ago, when Schwarzenegger proposed a special election on redistricting reform, school reform and a number of other issues, his opponents included legislative leaders who cried foul over the election's need and cost.
