On June 3, 2014, Mike Lee marks his ballot while voting in the California primary, in Sacramento, Calif.Rich Pedroncelli/The Associated Press
Attempting to take out incumbents is more than just a Tea Party sport. There are Democratic upstarts who partake, most notably a young intellectual-property lawyer named Ro Khanna, who raised more than $2.6-million (U.S.) to go after Mike Honda, who is in his 70s and has represented Silicon Valley in Congress since 2001.
Alas, Mr. Khanna finished second to Mr. Honda in California's primaries last week. No problem. Unlike the Tea Partiers who are being routinely shoved aside by the Republican establishment this primary season, Mr. Khanna's campaign still is very much alive. He and Mr. Honda will clash again soon – on Nov. 4, election day.
That's right: It's Dem vs. Dem in California's 17th district. As it does so much else, California chooses its elected representatives differently than most of the rest of the United States. The latest innovation in democracy by North America's most democratic jurisdiction could offer a way to fix everything that is wrong with Washington. (Louisiana and Washington state also choose their representatives in a similar manner.)
In 2012, California overhauled the way it conducts elections, instituting an open primary that did away with separate party-specific contests. There is one ballot populated by the candidates who round up the requisite number of signatures. The two candidates with the most votes go through to the election. Formally, it's called a "blanket" or a "top-two" primary. Informally, it's known as a "jungle" primary because, as Eric McGhee, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, puts it, "all bets are off. It's a Battle Royale."
The focus of California's electoral overhaul was setting up an independent commission to draw voting maps that reflect actual communities rather than clumps of Democratic and Republican partisans. The top-two primary, in theory, complements this by breaking the grip of one-note pressure groups by making campaigns more competitive.
If a district is split among Democrats, Republicans and independents, candidates have an incentive to temper their partisan enthusiasm. Say you have a majority Republican district and one candidate runs hard to the right. A second Republican might lose the primary, but win the election by picking up moderate Democratic and independent votes.
California "may have created an electoral system that favours centrists rather than politicians who play to their party's base," Joe Klein, author and Time magazine's political columnist, wrote in May.
Mr. Klein highlighted California's fourth district, where Art Moore, a West Point graduate who fought in Iraq and Kuwait, challenged incumbent Tom McClintock, who has won three terms as a Tea Party Republican. Mr. Moore, also a Republican, told Mr. Klein that he would not have run under the old system because an incumbent's advantage is too great.
Last week, Mr. Moore won 22.8 per cent of the vote to finish second, ahead of Jeffrey Gerlach, who ran as an unaffiliated, or independent, and got 21.6 per cent. Mr. Moore ran as a pragmatic Republican, telling voters that he was more interested in getting things done than taking "principled" stands to bolster his conservative voting record. That was a shot at Mr. McClintock, a hardliner who voted to shut down the government last year.
Mr. McClintock won more than half the vote in the primary. In years past, that would have been the end of his campaign. Democratic voters are scarce in his district, which encompasses the largely rural Central Valley. Because of the jungle primary, his campaign is only beginning.
As you would expect with something called the "jungle," the system is less than perfect.
In 2012, some Democratic districts went Republican because too many Democratic hopefuls entered the primary, splitting the vote and creating a path to victory for their true political enemies. (There are no obvious examples of that phenomenon this time, suggesting that party elders did a better job at protecting their chosen candidates.)
The "jungle" so far has failed to inspire Californians to engage in the primaries any more than they did before. There also is potentially wider scope for old-style political shenanigans: There were 18 names on the ballot in the 33rd district, suggesting that some may have been attempts to divert votes from stronger candidates. (Only five of the candidates received more than 10 per cent of the votes.)
"The jury is still out," Mr. McGhee said.
It's hard to make a case against the system's potential to create competitive races where none existed before. Twenty-five of the congressional districts in California will be fought over by candidates from the same party. Many will be won easily by the incumbent.
But the results of a few primaries suggest that the winner in November will be the candidate who draws the most support from the other side. Mr. Khanna is running as a business-friendly Democrat and has criticized the unions that long have supported Mr. Honda. In the 25th district, two Republicans advanced, with votes of 29.4 per cent and 28.3 per cent respectively. They were followed by two Democratic hopefuls who together pulled about a third of the votes cast.
Republicans will get the seat in the House of Representatives, but it appears that Democratic voters will decide who fills it.