Questions and answers of the day – Supporting political parties and primaries
Each day I present a listener question submitted in one of these ways.
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Today’s entry: 2 questions: I live in the 23rd district and got my ballot information a few days ago. I believe it shows 5 Republicans vs. 1 Democrat for the House seat. I contacted Kevin Neal and asked him who Trump and/or the Republican Party are supporting. Not one. Being disenfranchised by voters is not what they’re talking about. This is coming from the chairman of the Republican Party. Is the party just giving up and ignoring districts that are too risky and where they’re likely to lose? Boca is rich in Jewish culture and currently it seems smart to appeal to the Jewish voters. It definitely seems smart to support one candidate so conservatives and Republicans can unite and possibly win. Right?
Conclusion: There are several important points to discuss here – including the local political situation in Florida’s 23rd District ahead of the November election. But there is one overarching point that is particularly important in the context of this discussion. The purpose of modern primaries. The purpose of partisan primaries is for voters – not the established political party leadership – to decide who the candidates for various political offices should be.
While the current two-party system has been effectively in place since 1860, after the founding of the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln, an evolution of the party nomination process and processes occurred that spanned the next 110 years. What I am prepared to tell here is a somewhat simplified account of how the party nomination processes work, but I will quickly Important points why elections are held the way they are today and what role political parties play in these processes.
- Until 1914, political parties selected their own candidates for parliamentary elections.
- From 1916 onwards, political parties chose their own candidates for general elections, with limited influence from voters (although voters could vote, their votes did not determine the candidates – the decision remained with the party leadership).
- Starting in 1976, political parties left the nomination process to voters through primaries (but continued to retain some influence as “superdelegates” in the presidential primaries).
So the point of primaries for the past 48 years has been to democratize the primary process by allowing voters to tell political parties who they think the candidates should be, rather than having parties tell voters either who the respective candidates would be or, as is being questioned in today’s note, who the political parties think the candidates should be. This is why political parties do not endorse in primaries. The Republican Party will endorse the winner of the Republican primary in Florida’s 23rd District against incumbent Democrat Jared Moskowitz in the general election in November.
As for Donald Trump specifically, he frequently endorses candidates in his party’s primaries, although he has historically not endorsed candidates in most House races and has not done so now. There may be several reasons for this, and they are personal. Having accompanied Donald Trump through a vetting process for endorsements before, I have noticed that he has to be very comfortable with a candidate personally before endorsing them. This may mean that a race without a Trump-endorsed candidate is the result of a lack of direct interaction with the former president, which is common.
As for the local political scene in Boca Raton and beyond in Florida’s 23rd District (which stretches from southern Palm Beach County to Broward County), there is certainly no defeatist attitude in conservative circles. There is commitment and enthusiasm. I do not speak for the Republican Party locally or beyond, but a few important points are not lost on anyone. Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden in Boca Raton in 2020. In Boca, too, Florida Republicans won every statewide race in the 2022 midterm elections. With recent voting trends extremely favorable to Republicans in Florida’s 23rd District, narrowing the voter registration gap from a large double-digit Democratic lead to a single-digit lead heading into this year’s election season, there is strong belief that victory is possible not only in Boca, which is now effectively a red city, but also within the congressional district.
Hopefully that’s helpful. Take next Tuesday’s primary for what it’s meant to be. An opportunity for you to decide who you want to be your preferred candidate in the November election.
