This Question of the Day is inspired by the article in today’s NJ by Adam Taylor taking a look at some of the current complaints and issues about the Delaware Democratic Party’s endorsement process.
Last week, the NCCo Democratic Committee voted their endorsements for NCCo County Executive and NCCo Council President. They did this with three weeks left before candidates need to file and other timing issues. It also raises questions about the voting process itself — as in how does getting 10 out of 22 districts’ endorsement votes (not a majority) get you an endorsement? Rebecca Young explains:
The problem, county party Chairwoman Rebecca Young said, is that Delaware’s primary is on Sept. 11, less than two months before the general election.
“It’s very difficult, really,” Young said. “The filing deadline and the primary should be in the spring. But it’s not, so we live with this Rube Goldberg system.”
No doubt it its difficult, but why endorse when there is a primary at hand? While the candidate who gets the endorsement gets all of the Party support possible, the question is how does this benefit either voters or the process? It just looks as though the Party is trying to usurp the role of the voters and provide predigested winners. Part of the tell is here:
“To my mind, if the candidate is really serious, they would be filed and ready to roll long before now,” Young said. “If you’re an incumbent that’s one thing, but a challenger needs to be on the ground by March at the latest.”
Not to just pick on Rebecca, but this tells me that this is the Party deciding if you are “healthy” enough to run. It is a decision about how to spend Party resources, but not one about governing. We went through this in the Carney vs Markell race and a bunch of us didn’t think much of it then. Putting your thumb on the scale of decision-making process before voters make their decision basically looks as though the Party needs something to do during a Primary. Jack Markell’s win in 2008 should have sparked some soul searching about this endorsement process and as all of these endorsements get rolled out, I’m stunned that 4 years later that doesn’t seem to be any lessons learned here.
But that’s my opinion, and certainly not the opinion of this blog. What do you think?