Kim Wyman and Pam Roach’s SB 5978 won’t guarantee a meaningful presidential primary

Editor’s Note: Yes­ter­day, I trav­eled down in Olympia to tes­ti­fy before the House Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee on SB 5978, Kim Wyman and Pam Roach’s bill to replace our state’s pres­i­den­tial straw poll with an expen­sive, mean­ing­less straw poll in the event the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty decides to use a cau­cus to allo­cate its del­e­gates to the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia. The fol­low­ing is the text of my pre­pared testimony.

Good after­noon, Mr. Chair and mem­bers of the committee:

For the record, my name is Andrew Vil­leneuve. I’m the founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, a net­roots pow­ered strat­e­gy cen­ter work­ing to raise America’s qual­i­ty of life through inno­v­a­tive research and imag­i­na­tive advo­ca­cy. I’m here today to express our strong oppo­si­tion to SB 5978. 

This bill has been adver­tised by the Sec­re­tary of State as leg­is­la­tion that “requires” the state’s two major polit­i­cal par­ties to use a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry for allo­cat­ing their nation­al del­e­gates. But if you look through the lan­guage of the bill, you’ll see it does no such thing. And that’s because it can’t. It would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The First Amend­ment pro­tects the right of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can par­ties to freely assem­ble and car­ry on their affairs as they see fit.

What this bill real­ly does is replace our pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry with a straw poll in the event one or both major par­ties refuse to use the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate some of their con­ven­tion delegates.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, through its chair, Susan Hutchi­son, has already said it plans to use the pri­ma­ry to allo­cate some of its delegates.

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has his­tor­i­cal­ly nev­er used the pri­ma­ry to allo­cate any del­e­gates and lacks the flex­i­bil­i­ty under DNC rules to split its allo­ca­tion between a cau­cus and pri­ma­ry. All of its del­e­gates must be allo­cat­ed through one method and one method only.

We agree a pri­ma­ry should mean some­thing, if it is held, but this bill does not guar­an­tee that. Under Sec­tion 4 of SB 5978, the Sec­re­tary of State will begin prepar­ing to con­duct the most expen­sive pub­lic opin­ion research poll in the his­to­ry of the state, if, by Octo­ber 1st of this year, both par­ties do not agree to use a pri­ma­ry for allo­ca­tion of delegates.

We think this is irre­spon­si­ble. Elway and oth­er poll­sters can tell us what pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sup­port at a frac­tion of the cost of the straw poll this bill would autho­rize — at pri­vate expense. Why on Earth would we want to spend $11.5 mil­lion of the peo­ple’s mon­ey hold­ing an elec­tion that does­n’t mean anything?

If this Com­mit­tee intends to keep SB 5978 alive, we sug­gest amend­ing the bill to strike all of Sec­tion 4. That would result in a bill that mere­ly moves up the base date of the pri­ma­ry in state law (cur­rent­ly it’s in May, and it would change to March).

Although I am here today speak­ing on behalf of NPI, I do want to note that in addi­tion to serv­ing as NPI’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, I serve on the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cen­tral Com­mit­tee (WSDCC) and on the WSD­C­C’s Rules Com­mit­tee. I would like to take an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide you with some back­ground from the per­spec­tive of one of the peo­ple who will be mak­ing the deci­sion as to whether the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty choos­es a pri­ma­ry or cau­cus for 2016.

The WSD­C­C’s Rules and Affir­ma­tive Action Com­mit­tees will be meet­ing very soon to write our 2016 Del­e­gate Selec­tion and Affir­ma­tive Action Plan. Once we are fin­ished with our draft, we’ll make it avail­able to the pub­lic for com­ment ahead of our April 18th meet­ing in Pas­co, where the full WSDCC will con­sid­er the draft plan.

At that meet­ing, we will make a deci­sion as to whether to use a cau­cus or pri­ma­ry for del­e­gate allo­ca­tion. The DNC requires that we sub­mit our plan to them for approval by ear­ly May. The deci­sion is ours to make as the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed lead­ers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty — not the Leg­is­la­ture’s, not the Sec­re­tary of State’s, and not the Gov­er­nor’s. How we gov­ern our­selves and choose our nom­i­nee is up to us; as I said ear­li­er, the First Amend­ment gives us the right to freely assemble.

We do care what the pub­lic thinks, which is why we’ll be hold­ing a pub­lic com­ment peri­od. The par­ty is com­mit­ted to a nom­i­nat­ing process that is inclu­sive and open.

The reac­tion I’ve got­ten to this bill from talk­ing to par­ty lead­ers has been uni­ver­sal­ly neg­a­tive. If this bill moves for­ward as is, I think we are less like­ly to choose a pri­ma­ry for del­e­gate allo­ca­tion. The con­tin­ued exis­tence of this bill is only going to strength­en the posi­tion of those who favor con­tin­u­ing to use cau­cus­es. We there­fore sug­gest that it either be aban­doned or amend­ed to remove Sec­tion 4.

Thank you for your time this after­noon and I’d be hap­py to take any questions.