Editorial: Primaries are for voters
Local leaders of the Republican and Democratic Party organizations, taking their cues from statewide leaders, are conferring, dickering and bargaining to eliminate all “opposition” in the April 25 primaries.
For the sake of “harmony” they are endeavoring to patch up a slate on which a majority of them can agree – and then run everybody else out of the race.
In this enterprise, they are warmly, and even forcefully, encouraged by the big leaders.
The purpose is to avoid party splits, to set up solidarity for the main contest in November.
Some of the motives behind this program may have merit. The “harmony” slate may be helpful to party discipline. It may prevent the kind of mudslinging contests which have characterized factional disputes in so many recent primaries. And probably it will enable the two parties to hoard their campaign funds for the big battles in the fall.
But this backroom slate-making defeats the purpose of primary elections.
Years ago, Pennsylvania, and a great many other states, abandoned the convention form of choosing party candidates for local, state and Congressional officers. The convention system was abolished because it became rotten and anything but democratic. The desires of the voters were ignored. Instead of candidates freely nominated by the people, the voters in November were confronted by candidates handpicked by whatever bosses could control or buy the party conventions. The election became a contest between two cliques of bosses, rather than two parties.
The open primary has not cured that condition entirely. Bosses still control nominations, often by force of fat purses or political patronage rather than by any qualities of leadership.
But the worst of the evils inherent in the convention system have been eliminated, or at least curtailed.
The primary offers any candidate the opportunity to present himself to the people. And political bosses frequently have been defeated in primaries.
In this campaign, the bosses, operating under the guise of party “harmony,” are attempting to restore the old convention system.
This system may be more subtle than the convention plan, but it smacks of the same dangers.
A few party leaders, many of them self-appointed, summon potential candidates behind closed doors and decide this candidate may run and that candidate may not.
In some cases, the leaders have called in the elected party committeemen from the precincts and allowed them a determining voice. This perhaps gives the slate-making an air of democratic processes, but the principle of the primary is still being violated.
Primaries were created to give the people a chance to pick their own candidates. The people don’t get that chance unless there is a free entry of candidates, unhampered by pressure from bosses, or office-holders or professional politicians.