07/03/14: Even the schedule is inside baseball

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

THERE’S AN ELECTION coming up this weekend, and I’ll bet most of those affected have no idea it is happening.

A small wave of retirements of Democratic members of the Virginia legislature is taking place. While Sen. Phil Puckett stepping down has drawn a lot of attention, two others last Friday and one Tuesday have joined him. Friday’s announcement included Del. Algie Howell, who represents parts of Norfolk and Virginia Beach in District 90.

The special election to replace Puckett, who resigned in early June, was set for Aug. 19. Almost immediately, candidates began jockeying for party nominations. Within 10 days, the candidates were chosen.

Monday, Speaker of the House William J. Howell also chose Aug. 19 as the special election date for Algie Howell’s seat and that of the Northern Virginia delegate who resigned the same day.

Because the date of the election is less than 60 days away, pursuant to Virginia Code § 24.2-510, parties have five days from the date of the speaker’s order to nominate a candidate. Due to the holiday, the deadline for party nominations is Monday, so the parties get seven days.

Let that sink in for a minute. Seven days to organize a nominating contest. Obviously, holding a primary is not an option. The choices pretty much boil down to an assembled caucus, otherwise known as a mass meeting, or an unassembled caucus, known as a firehouse primary.

For candidates it means seven days to decide to get in the race, get their petitions signed and organize their supporters.

Seven days. This is inside baseball at its worst. There is nothing democratic about this process.

Party insiders will choose the nominee — and those decisions have less to do with the quality of the candidate than who knows whom. Forget nominating someone from outside the party structure; that ain’t happening.

Perhaps the worst of this is that gerrymandering has made these districts safe. Although Puckett is a Democrat, his district is reliably Republican. For the other three, the districts are reliably Democratic.

The 90th, for example, is overwhelmingly Democratic: No Republican has received as much as 25 percent of the vote there over the past two election cycles. Not only will the party nominee win this special election, but it is very likely that person will be in the seat for as long as he wants.

So long as we have such gerrymandering, it just makes sense for the nominating process to be longer. The nomination is, in effect, the election.

The speaker of the House of Delegates didn’t have to do this. He could have chosen a date farther in the future, one that would have allowed the voters to have a real say in who would represent them. For that matter, he could have put the special elections in November, when voters are going to the polls, anyway.

The choice of Aug. 19 for Puckett’s seat, made by Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Colgan, was a deliberate, political one: to avoid having the race on the ballot in November when the U.S. Senate contest would be at the top of the ticket. Colgan, a Democrat who no longer holds that position in the Senate and has since announced that he will not run for reelection, wasn’t going to choose an election date that might drive up Republican turnout in a district where Mitt Romney won 67 percent of the vote.

That was the wrong reason to choose Aug. 19. But the speaker’s choice of that same date for the 90th and the Northern Virginia 48th House districts is equally wrong and worse, punitive — for the voters in those districts. The candidate from the speaker’s party, should there be one, has little chance to win.

And we wonder why people don’t vote.

A firehouse primary for the Democratic nominee for the 90th House District will be held this Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at a location in Virginia Beach and one in Norfolk.

As of this writing, the Republicans do not intend to field a candidate.