Hearst Connecticut Media Group Opinion Editors John Breunig, Anthony Branciforte and Jeffery Kurz compare notes about the ideal date for a summer primary in our “Let’s Talk About …” feature. Join the conversation at [email protected]. Please include your name and town and limit comments to no more than 250 words.
John Breunig: Let me just open up by saying I’m glad we have primaries at all. Determining the candidates is the most important part of this political process. And it should be decided by the voters instead of political insiders. One of my gripes is when local political insiders choose who’s in, say, a Board of Education race. So by the time you get to the voting booth in November, there’s no choice. This year we have important primary races for governor and in the first congressional district, and I feel bad for candidates trying to draw Connecticut voters to vote on the second Tuesday in August, when many voters aren’t even in Connecticut. The public is distracted by summer vacations, the kids being home and Spider-Man movies. Should these primaries be moved to another spot on the calendar?
Jeffery Kurz: The quick answer is yes, but the difficult question is where are you going to move it to? If you have it in September and kids are back to school, then you have a better chance of voters being back in their home state to vote in a primary. The other interesting thing about Aug. 11 coming up is that it’s going to be the first time for Connecticut voters to vote via no-excuse absentee balloting, which is now available. And it’s hard to say whether we’ll be able to learn anything from this as to whether that increases participation or not.
Anthony Branciforte: August can be inconvenient because of things like vacation. But in a way, it also strikes me as a sweet spot. There’s been a push, in the past, to move primaries back earlier in the summer, which strikes me as the wrong move. I think we need robust primary campaigns, especially because in states that are deep blue, like Connecticut, or deep red, the primary is often the election that determines who will hold office. The gubernatorial election is probably going to be closer, but betting odds are that in the first district, whoever wins the Democratic primary is going to be the congressman. So shortening the primary campaign sounds like a bad idea. At the same time, you do need a robust general election campaign. If you’re pushing it to mid-September, you’re really getting into the territory of six or seven weeks between the primary and the general, which is not advantageous either.
Breunig: More than 40% of Connecticut’s voters are unaffiliated, excluding them from the primaries. If there’s evidence that the system doesn’t work, it’s in the numbers. The last time we did this two years ago, 7.6% of eligible Republican voters and 16% of their Democratic counterparts cast a ballot. That’s a pretty dismal percentage of Connecticut’s population speaking up. When she was secretary of the state, Susan Bysiewicz made a push to primaries in June. She got blowback from legislators, and they had a reasonable point. If you’re serving the General Assembly and the session goes into overtime in June, you could be seeking higher office against an opponent who isn’t trapped under the gold dome.
Kurz: The primary really doesn’t tell you how people are going to sway typically. Ned Lamont’s a perfect example of this. In 2006, he beat Joe Lieberman in the Senate primary on Aug. 8 and then went on to lose to Lieberman in the general election months later. I’m not sure that kind of thing is going to change that much by just jumping it around from June or even to September. Do you think it would be advantageous for the nation to have a national primary day?
Breunig: Oh, I can’t imagine that working.
Kurz: It’s been proposed since the early 20th century, but there’s never been political support. At least it would be a date that people remember.
Breunig: But even Election Day is not a date that people remember.
Kurz: At least a national primary day would put it more in the public consciousness. It would get more media coverage and might drum up participation.
Branciforte: I think it’s overall good for him. A friend of mine pointed out recently that in Lamont’s ads and in Elliott’s ads, they are emphasizing that they are Democrats, whereas in Fazio’s ads, he’s not emphasizing that he is a Republican. And I think that having to spend time appealing to one voter base — which is really what Lamont and Elliott are pigeonholed into doing right now — is not good for them. Look nationally at the presidential level. The parties don’t like having drawn-out primaries because then their candidate walks into the general bruised.
Breunig: Reporters always do stories about the weather forecast for Election Day, because we see numbers go up or down depending on whether it rains. And if you had an election in the winter, there would always be the threat of bad weather. So a seismic shift in this process is never going to happen. But as we ask people to vote, we should take a vote ourselves. So I’m going to vote to moving primaries to later in August when vacations are over and kids are getting back to school.
Kurz: I think that’s a good soft spot. It’s less than a month difference that might provide a good advantage in terms of getting more people to participate.
Branciforte: July would be a good compromise. I still don’t really have an issue with August. And I would also just throw out that maximizing participation is a very worthy goal, but high-propensity voters also tend to be the most informed voters. I’m fine with having a lower percentage of voters participating if they are the ones paying attention to what’s going on.
Share your views at [email protected]. Please include your name and town and limit comments to no more than 250 words.
