How will the 2006 elimination of runoffs in the primaries affect us?

Research memo

Starting with this from 01/01/2006 PNJ:
 
Regarding new laws that take effect - in particular this change:  "Runoff elections: Eliminates the state's second primary elections when no candidate wins a majority of votes. Plurality winners will take primaries."
 
Maybe I didn't catch it elsewhere in the newspaper, but this is one major change that if applied to many earlier elections, would have rewritten history - and will fundamentally shift the power to be elected from those who represent the majority of thinking in a district to those who represent only a significant minority of voters who could never win a majority to their skewed ideology.
 
Which brings up the stories and columns I'm suggesting you consider:
 
For the news desk: How about a look at local elections in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties which would have found a different candidate winning the election because the candidate could get the biggest plurality, but when up against the runoff, the coalition of voters opposed to the leading plurality winner enabled another candidate to win the second runoff instead.
 
Of course this could be taken to a broader level by talking about statewide elections just to generate something that puts the PNJ in the lead to document the ramifications of this change at a level that would attract attention from other Gannett newspapers to pick up the story - and make the majors regret getting scooped . . .
 
But even if you forget that and stay local, it is still a very significant story.
 
Analysis? For the Opinion analysis columns and the local community columnist on 1-C: So how would this be a different area if different faces had occupied the seats of political leadership and power? And what does that portend for the area's future?
 
Something that is critical in the analysis of this change is that it allows more extreme candidates the opportunity to get elected when their block of support is big enough to beat other candidates fractionating the vote - but that block would be eliminated when the mainstreamers gathered around the candidate who came in second - which is a circumstance that in the past inhibited the extreme blocks from entering races. The inability to get majority votes is no longer of any concern to the extreme blocks - and therefore, no longer an inhibition. Actually, it is an enthusiastic encourager to run since the standard to get elected is so tremendously lowered.
 
Here's an example narrative, not local - but illustrative of the concept using George Wallace because he is so embedded in our minds: We begin in 1964 when George Wallace is running for the first time as a candidate of the Democratic Party for president. He enters three state primaries - Wisconsin, Maryland, and Indiana. He barely campaigns and still he "wins" them garnering as much as 43% of the votes cast.
 
The mainstream leadership of the party is brutally awakened to the possibility that LBJ isn't going to get the nomination. This doesn't play well in "Camelot," as the ideological, cultural, and social bubble encasing the Kennedy power nexus is affectingly called. The folly of plurality dictating an election - which brings even more brutal visions of losing the White House - focuses their minds with antagonizing force.
 
In case you're wondering, the implications of Wallace's plurality win resulting in a "winner take all" delegate allocation as a call for massive rules changes in the party wasn't lost on the Democratic Party's national leadership - as you'll see in a moment. But we must go first to the presidential election of 1968 when Wallace headlines the American Independent Party. This description comes from Racism to Redemption: The Path of George Wallace by Maggie Riechers.
 
"Even as his wife's health was declining, Wallace began his 1968 presidential bid, this time challenging the Republicans and Democrats with his new American Independent Party.
 
"The country was in turmoil on the heels of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., riots in major cities, antiwar marches and sit-ins. The explosive atmosphere put Wallace in a prime position with his law-and-order message, his opposition to the civil rights acts passed by Congress, and the Supreme Court's decisions on school prayer, integration, and later, on abortion. By October of 1968, 22 percent of American voters supported George Wallace for president. In the general election he won five states with ten million people casting their votes for him and nearly throwing the election to the House of Representatives."
 
Too bad for the Democrats he didn't do better; if it had gone to the Democratic-controlled House, Hubert Humphrey would have president instead of Richard Nixon. Yes, pluralities have the power to change history.
 
OK, so only a 22% plurality nearly caused a rewrite of history. That is highly significant. Less than 1 person in four comes within a hair of redirecting the entire nation's course and history. What if his popularity had climbed to the levels you will see it reach when we look at the 1972 presidential election?
 
But first we seek an example in 1970, when Wallace runs again for governor following his wife's 1968 death after being elected as his surrogate in 1966. Now watch how the no-runoff provision would have changed history; and please don't let your political prejudices cause you to applaud this circumstance and lose sight of the concept at work here. I'm citing Wallace because he is so well known. The effect of the no runoff can just as easily cut out a candidate whose political philosophy you passionately support.
 
From the official Alabama State Archives write-up of the Wallace story, "In the first primary election of 1970 Albert Brewer, Lurleen's successor and former Wallace ally, out polled Wallace 421,197 votes to 414,277 votes; however, Wallace out polled Brewer in the second primary. Subsequently, Wallace won the general election of November and was inaugurated in January of the following year."
 
You get the idea, although it's probably hard for most people to call what would have happened had there been no runoff a "bad" consequence of the law. At any rate, focusing on the concept and not the individuals, my point is that no-runoff means history will be redirected by the ability of a plurality winning candidate to take office. In this specific case you may wish there had been no runoff; again, putting away prejudices so we can focus on this as political scientists and not as ideologists, what I'd like to suggest is that in the bigger scheme of things it makes candidates appealing to more extreme blocks able to beat candidates who represent the true majority of voters in an election. Whether you like it or not, in 1970, Wallace represented the true majority of voters in Alabama.
 
If the candidate getting shut out by the no runoff rule just happens to be your favorite, and the win goes to an extreme candidate instead, you might not be so happy about the way no runoff works.
 
Keeping with the Wallace story, it is now 1972, and Wallace drops the third-party route and decides to go again for the Democratic nomination for president.
 
He starts in Florida, and wins a plurality of all 67 counties in the state. Of course, the majority of Americans, and particularly nearly all liberal Americans, are shell-shocked thinking about the idea Wallace could walk off with the nomination. Remember, this is the McGovern era in the party. Can you imagine what changes would have occurred in America if it was Wallace versus Nixon instead of McGovern?
 
Because of Democratic Party rules changes brought about by what his race in 1968 demonstrated about a plurality candidate, the party by 1972 has eliminated "winner take all" delegate allocations in Florida. Wallace averaged 33% of the delegates up for grabs in Florida - by extrapolation, or if you want to double-check my research on his poll numbers to get the same result for yourself, we can see he is significantly more popular with a broad cross-section of Americans than he was in 1968. This time, Wallace stands a truly realistic chance to be a mainstream party's nominee for president.
 
As Burton S. Blumert chronicles in The US Political System in Crisis: How Sweet It Is, "Wallace’s performance in the 1972 Democrat presidential primaries stunned the established order. He won the primaries in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, and Michigan and was a close second in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Wallace was no longer winning just the southern states; he was a national candidate."
 
Wallace is declared a national candidate, by "winning" only because his plurality was greater than anyone else's - not because he was winning with true majorities. If you look at the percentages voting for candidates in stark opposition to Wallace's social philosophy, you quickly see Wallace is a marginal candidate empowered by plurality rewards on a path taking him straight to the presidency.
 
But we all know how Arthur Bremer put an end to Wallace's national role.
 
But that sidelight distracts from my point: Using Wallace and his ideology as a "type" for this conversation, the point is that an extreme candidate appealing to a significant block large enough to give the candidate the leading plurality position can take someone who fails to be truly representative of the community and elevate that individual to elected political power. While Wallace was plurality solid, he was not majority solid. But votes in total don't decide presidential primaries, or presidential elections, as John Kerry will curse, and George Bush will give thanks to God. Lingering for a second off-track, returning the focus to 1972, leave it to say Wallace was no fool, and he was on his way to the White House.
 
Coming back on-track, the meaning of all this is that a plurality candidate, unrepresentative of the community majority, can beat another candidate who is representative of that majority. Frankly, that's a really scary thought.
 
But what is even scarier is that no one I'm aware of in the Florida print journalism community thought this through as the change in runoffs worked its way through the Legislature. (But maybe I missed it when researching this memo . . .)
 
For news or commentary, the question needs to be asked of every local rep or senator to get him or her on the record defending their role in bringing this change to fruition after the earthquake this would have caused in the past, and likely will cause in the future, is laid out to readers. Asking now would be premature since the documentation of the premise for the disaster will be lacking.
 
But think about it - these people are supporting a system that they abhor when applied to national politics. So locals get the refuse of the nationals?
 
Thank you for taking time to get to the end of this research memo. I hope it provides the foundational thinking to bring this before readers - especially in this election year. No runoffs is a tectonic change in electoral strategy. I hope the PNJ will present its history, and its future implications, to readers.