Posts Tagged: partisan divide

News

CA120: Deconstructing California’s top-two primary

A political rally in southern California during the 2016 election cycle. (Photo: Joseph Sohm)

With the close of the 2018 primary election cycle, we get another chance to see how campaigns have evolved under California’s top-two open primary system. The most noteworthy change appears to be the manner by which campaigns are extending their reach across the partisan aisle. But they are not doing it in the way that the authors of the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect in 2011, intended.

News

GOP’s Chad Mayes: A warrior in an uphill battle

Assembly GOP Leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley, during an August 2016 floor session. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)

Chad Mayes, the affable leader of Assembly Republicans, says he wakes up every morning thinking about the low state of his party in California. Mayes has plenty to ponder. Republicans have no statewide officeholders, a paltry 26 percent of registered voters (just a bit higher than the 24 percent who decline to state a party affiliation) and Mayes himself has to deal with a 25-55 Democratic supermajority in his Assembly.

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