Top-two primary system troubles parties

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published March 26, 2008

Washington's political parties are unsure how to handle the state's new top-two primary election Aug. 19, saying they want to see how Secretary of State Sam Reed designs the ballots.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld the 2004 citizen initiative that created the top-two primary. Using that method, candidates run under any party banner they wish, voters pick any candidate of any party, and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation.

Republicans and Democrats in past years threatened to nominate their candidates by convention or other means if the state went with Initiative 872's top-two system. And they could go to court about use of their party "trademarks" by candidates who don't have their blessings.

Revisions considered

Leaders of the state Republican Party suspended their rules to have a nominating convention this year. Even so, party leaders are up in the air and could revise the rules to stage some kind of selection process, state GOP chairman Luke Esser said.

Democrats plan an April 3 meeting of their state party's executive board to clarify what approach they'll take. Most likely it will be some form of nominating conventions for precinct committee officers.

If Democrats decide to select favorites in each partisan race, they could put themselves in a bind. They could have to play kingmaker, for instance, in the Thurston County Commission race pitting well-known Democrats John Halvorson and Sandra Romero against each other this year, something they have resisted in the past.

Thurston County Democratic chairman John Cusick said he hopes there is some way the party's precinct committee officers could be allowed to nominate more than one candidate in situations such as the race between Romero and Halvorson.

"I want to hold out that possibility," Cusick said.

Failing that, he said the party's precinct committee officers might nominate one candidate, and the party might endorse two. Or, the party could bypass all of the nomination problems by just letting the top two play out the way its sponsors intended, letting candidates run regardless of party support.