ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150032
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
IN 1977, legend has it, many Virginia Republicans crossed over to vote for Henry Howell in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. It was an orchestrated effort, so the story goes, to nominate the Democrats' weaker candidate for the general election against Republican John Dalton.
Howell won the primary, then lost to Dalton, but whether crossover primary voting was a factor is highly questionable. Nevertheless, the alleged practice continues to be invoked as an argument against primary elections.
The latest salvo comes in the form of a court challenge - brought by a GOP state lawmaker and Pat McSweeney, state Republican chairman - to Virginia's open-primary law.
McSweeney says he recognizes the lawsuit may look like a move against the Republicans' incumbent U.S. Sen. John Warner. No kidding.
Warner, opposed for renomination by James C. Miller III, former Reagan budget director, angered McSweeney and many other party activists when the senator chose not to support GOP nominee Oliver North in the 1994 Senate election.
That anger is why Warner, whose approval rating with the overall Virginia public remains high, is thought to have a better chance of winning renomination in the June 11 primary than if the nominee were chosen by convention.
GOP officials have a point in criticizing the part of the law that gave Warner the privilege to choose the nominating method. It's an incumbency-protection device that the General Assembly ought to wipe from the books.
There is, however, a solution to both that problem and to supposed fears of crossover voting: Virginia should mandate primaries for both political parties, as most states do. If both parties held primaries, a voter could cross over to the other primary only by forfeiting a voice in his own party's selection of a candidate.
Primaries also provide for broader participation than caucus-convention systems, in which the outcome can be unduly influenced by party bosses and/or unrepresentative special-interest activists, and in which - in the past - convention-goers have been charged for the right to vote.
Give Republicans credit: At least some of them - Sen. Warner, anyway - wanted a primary.
And give the Democrats blame: Their Senate nomination, too, is being contested - and no move at all was made for a primary to choose between Mark Warner and former Congresswoman Leslie Byrne.
Even so, McSweeney's claim that the open-primary law infringes on a party's right to ``associate freely with other citizens for the advancement of shared political objectives'' sounds strange. He seems to forget that winning general elections is a major party objective, and no Virginia candidate - Republican or Democrat - ever won by appealing only to party insiders.
Republicans might worry about a party chairman who is offended by the possibility that a GOP candidate might attract votes from Democrats and independents.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB