July 10, 2007

On Democratic Closed Caucuses

Posted by Adam Graham in : Idaho Conservative, The

My State Rep. Branden Durst (D-18.) defends the Democrat Closed Caucuses:

For the purposes of clarity, let me explain a few things. First, in an IDP presidential caucus you are required to publicly support one candidate. In a primary, your decision is private. In an IDP presidential caucus you are actually voting for delegates to send to the IDP state convention. In a primary, you vote for real candidates. The IDP presidential caucus is privately funded. Primaries are publicly funded.

So, would Durst be okay if Republicans had a privately funded caucus to choose GOP candidates? I doubt it. It would elimate Democrat tampering efforts. The point about taxpayer funding of the election is a irrelevant. Many states fund closed primary elections. There’s no real conflict, if all parties have the opportunity to have the primary, and no one suggested they shouldn’t. Durst continues on:

Here is the kicker — even with the overtly partisan nature of the IDP presidential caucus, you will never be asked to show your “Democratic credentials.” That’s right, it’s completely open to anyone and politically anonymous — just how Idaho primaries are, and the way they should stay.

A couple things. The Democrats are hardly being gracious by not asking to see people’s bonafides. We have no party registration to check, so they have nothing to ask for. However, as pointed out by Grassroots Idaho GOP, the caucus is not all that open:

It is quite interesting that should one be inclined to participate in the Idaho Democratic State Caucus, one must sign a “loyalty oath” stating that they intend to vote Democratic in the following general election. Hummmm!?!

So, the Democratic Caucus is open to anyone willing to sign a loyalty oath for the general election (talk about an invasion of privacy.) ? So, it’s open to people with no honor, and true Democrats, and that’s it.

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Comments (4)

4 Comments

Comment by W. Lane Startin

Idaho Democrats have held presidential caucuses for decades, and now suddenly that’s an issue? The “loyalty card” thing may be a bit cheesy, but it’s certainly not binding (or particularly threatening). If a Republican wanted to attend a caucus under the radar, as it were, he or she could do so and we wouldn’t know a thing about it until we started making calls weeks after the fact. Further, there would be exactly bupkis we could do about it.

As for “tampering,” the only time I remember hearing in any regularity about that was back in ‘94, when it was said some Democrats voted for the perceived weakest candidate for then-Rep. Larry LaRocco to run against … a certain Helen Chenoweth. Oops.

So it may very well be that registration by party is in Idaho’s near future. Regardless of how you feel about that, just don’t forget that Pandora’s Box was opened at a meeting of Idaho Republicans in Burley, no one else.
Comment by Adam Graham

It’s an issue now that Democrats are trying to bludgeon Republicans over the head with allegations of violating privacy.

As for tampering, I’d point you to this column by Bill Cope, this post by Alan at Idablue. Then Marv Hagadorn posts two letters to the editor urging tampering, here and here. This corrupts our process and does need to stop.
Comment by W. Lane Startin

I’d submit (1) this sort of thing wouldn’t happen if the typical Idaho Democratic primary had more electricity than an Amish rave (our fault) and (2) the track record for such things is, well, pretty terrible from my standpoint. Frankly I think the current setup helps conservative Republicans overall.

All this further leads me to wonder why y’all couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Comment by Adam Graham

Because what we have now is an absurdity. We’d like to have a political party of our ow, not share 1 with our opponents.