Thanks to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News for this post.

Tony Quinn, a California Republican with more than thirty years Experience in Government and in the Political Consulting business, has this Column in Fox & Hounds. The column expresses fear that the November 2018 California Gubernatorial Election will only have two Democrats on the Ballot. He writes that if that happens, Republican Voters will not turn out to Vote, and any Statewide Ballot Measures will be decided mostly by Democratic Voters. For the last few years, California Law has dictated that all Statewide Initiatives appear only on General Election Ballots.

Quinn was a fervent backer of California's Top-Two system when it passed in June 2010.

Excerpts from Tony Quinn's Column in Fox & Hounds:

After their decade long agony of defeat, California Republicans can suddenly see a tiny flicker of hope on the horizon.  It comes in the form of the gas tax increase pushed through the legislature by Gov. Brown and majority Democrats which it turns out is quite unpopular. Can Republicans make any political hay out of this and begin to reverse their fortunes?

The problem, however, is that there are no Republican candidates. If next year’s fall general election simply features two Democrats trying to out Trump-hate each other, there will be little reason for Republicans voters to turn out.

Additionally, the race for control of the US House of Representatives goes through California. Seven of the 14 GOP incumbent members of congress are in districts carried in 2016 by Hillary Clinton, and all are potential 2018 targets. At least two or three other seats carried narrowly by President Trump could be on the list.

With as many as 10 Republican-held congressional districts at risk in 2018, California alone could produce more than half the gains Democrats need to return Nancy Pelosi again as House Speaker.

A top two Democratic runoff for governor in 2018 makes this scenario all the more likely; millions of GOP voters will simply stay home (as many Republicans refused to vote in the race between the two Democrats running for the US Senate in 2016). With no candidate to articulate opposition to the gas tax increase, and by implication to the methods of allocating public funds in this state, the effort to make the tax a political issue will have failed, and California Republicans will simply continue unabated their descent into a long night of darkness.











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