Activists seeking to eliminate primaries as the mode of selecting party candidates in Oklahoma argue that shifting to a California-style “open primary” will produce more “moderate” candidates—even though the California system routinely limits voters’ choices to two candidates from the same political party during the general election.

But a report published by one out-of-state group backing the initiative petition that would upend Oklahoma’s election processes previously hailed one of the most partisan Democrats in Congress as a success story for California’s “open primary” process.

In August 2015, the group Open Primaries issued “A QUIET REVOLUTION: The Early Successes of California’s Top Two Nonpartisan Primary.” That report noted that critics of California’s “open primary” system “often point to same-party races as evidence of a lack of competition under the system.”

But officials with Open Primaries claimed that single-party general elections are a sign of “increased competitiveness.”

“The implementation of Top Two saw incumbents defeated in record numbers. In 2012, 10 incumbents lost their re-election bids, including Pete Stark, who was unseated by fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell in a same-party general election,” the Open Primaries report stated.

Swalwell, a product of California’s “top two” election system, has been among the most partisan Democrats in Congress, receiving national attention for his zeal.

Swalwell’s U.S. House website brags that as a member of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, he “helped lead the House Investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and later, the first and second impeachments of Donald Trump.”

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte recently sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting an investigation of Swalwell for alleged mortgage and tax fraud, based on allegedly false and misleading statements Swalwell made related to the purchase of a $1.2 million home in Washington, D.C., that he claimed as a primary residence.

Swalwell responded to the allegations by releasing a statement declaring, “As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me.”

According to ratings from a range of interest groups, Swalwell’s record in Congress has not been one of moderation, but of strong support for left-wing causes and constant opposition to conservative policies.

During his years in Congress, Swalwell has voted the conservative position just 3 percent of the time, according to a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) rating.

He has received a zero-percent rating from the American Farm Bureau Federation and a 14-percent rating from the National Federation of Independent Business; a 100-percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union; a 100-percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ organization; a zero-percent rating from the Family Policy Alliance, the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family; a zero-percent rating from the National Rifle Association; and a 100-percent rating from the pro-gun-control Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. 

On immigration issues, Swalwell has received a 100-percent rating from the American Immigration Lawyers Association but a zero-percent rating from the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

He has also received 100-percent ratings from pro-abortion organizations and 0-percent ratings from pro-life groups.

Swalwell recently announced he is running for governor of California.

Oklahoma’s current election system allows Republican voters to pick Republican nominees in party primaries while Democratic voters do the same in their party’s primaries, with the two parties’ candidates then facing off in the November general election along with any independent candidates who file for an office.

But under the proposed State Question 836, all Oklahoma candidates—Democrats, Republicans, and independents—would be placed on a single ballot with all voters participating. The two candidates receiving the most votes would then proceed to the November general election, even if they are both members of the same political party.

That would largely mirror California elections, where voters’ November choices are often limited to two members of the same party, and even statewide races have involved only two Democratic candidates.

An initiative-petition effort is underway to collect 172,993 valid signatures to place SQ 836 on the ballot in Oklahoma.

The out-of-state Open Primaries group is a major player in that effort and lists Oklahoma as one of the state campaigns it is backing, stating that the Oklahoma effort “builds on ten years of conversations and organizing in the Sooner state.”

Had SQ 836’s California-style primary system been in place in Oklahoma in 2018, voters’ choices would have been limited to two liberal Democrats in that year’s governor’s race.

In Oklahoma’s 2018 gubernatorial race, there were 10 candidates who filed to run as Republicans and two who filed to run as Democrats. In the June 2018 primary, 452,606 Oklahomans cast a vote for a Republican gubernatorial candidate compared to just 395,494 votes cast for a Democrat.

But under SQ 836’s California model, the November ballot that year would have pitted Democrat Drew Edmondson against Democrat Connie Johnson with no Republican option for Oklahoma voters. Because the Republican vote was split 10 ways in the primary, no GOP candidate received more votes than the second-place finisher in the Democratic primary during the initial round of voting.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons