California's Prop 14 Ballot Language Fight a Win for Independents

More commentary on California's Proposition 14 "top two" open primary referendum after Judge Allen Sumner's ballot language ruling on Friday. The ruling was seen as a win for independent voters by attorney Harry Kresky of IndependentVoting and by Californians for an Open Primary/Yes on 14... Meanwhile, state Rep. Hunter Greene, a Republican who chairs the state House Ways and Means Committee, wants an open primary for Louisiana.... Plus some more state political news below, including NYS Independence Party boss picks Schumer for Gov...

PROPOSITION 14

• Editorial: Bay Area News Group urges a yes vote on Proposition 14 (Oakland Tribune Medianews editorial)
• California GOP ends conference bullish, but shadowed by past defeats (By Jack Chang, Sac Bee)
• 'Ayatollah' Willie Brown wants a more moderate Legislature (George Skelton, LA Times/Capitol Journal)
• Judge orders new wording in summary of Prop. 14 (By Dan Smith, Sac Bee)
• Both candidates veer right in Calif. GOP gov. race (By JULIET WILLIAMS Associated Press Writer, Mercury News)
• How students can turn anger into Capitol action (John Diaz, SF Chronicle) Sucinct description of language fight
• Electoral reforms won't fix California gridlock (Eric McGhee, San Francisco Chronicle)
• Both Sides Are Unhappy with Wording Changes to California’s Proposition 14 (Ballot Access News) references Judge orders ballot changes for open primary measure (Dan Smith, Sac Bee/Capitol Alerts)
• Legal Fight over Ballot Wording For Proposition 14 (Carnival of Politics)

LOUISIANA OPEN PRIMARY

• Greene says return to open primaries (The Advocate/Inside Politics)

GOVERNORS RACES

• Cahill navigating uncharted waters-No independent has won statewide race (By Brian C. Mooney, Boston Globe) Cahill often invokes voter registration statistics to buttress his rationale for an independent candidacy. Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 3 to 1, but so-called unenrolled voters now constitute 51 percent of the electorate.

NEW YORK

• Smith: Is Jose Peralta Really All That Much Better Than Hiram Monserrate? (NY Mag/Daily Intelligencer)
• Independence Party endorses Schumer for Senate (Dunkirk NY Observer)

Read more at The Hankster

SC: Independence Party Candidate for 1-CD

From the South Carolina Radio Network:

There are currently a dozen candidates in the race for the First Congressional District seat after Congressman Henry Brown announced his retirement. There is only one candidate that is representing the Independence Party. Jimmy Wood says why he’s decided to run: “I see a lot of headlines, I see a lot of chatter on Fox News and other organizations where the Republican party is reaching out to the Tea Party candidates. They are trying to secure that conservative base of power back into their grasp. I believe with all of my heart it’s a little bit too late. I think for years the Republicans have looked at the conservative branch of our society and they’ve said ‘if you don’t like where we are going, where else are you going to go?’ Well, I think recently they’ve seen where we are going to go,” says Wood.

Independent Voters, the Media, and the Movement

The Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat continues to reverberate (or is that ricochet?) in the media [for a quick round-up of latest Charlie Cook in National Journal, Robert Reich on Huffington Post, Dan Balz in Washington Post and Kristi Keck on CNN, see today's Hankster] and independent voters remain center stage (the newly elected Senator is that guy who posed nude for Cosmo, right?...) To wit:

• Howard Fineman gets it right with one of the most grounded descriptions of independents in print in Independent Minded (Newsweek).
• Also of note, Elizabeth Benjamin, who took Ben's place at the Daily News when Mr. Smith went to Washington with Politico, gets it right in Bloomberg's Independence (Pay)Day by making the first ever in print distinction between the grassroots NYC Independence Party Organizations and the Upstate-Anything-But-Independent-"We're proud to be the party of business"-MacKay crowd.
• And then there's Thomas Friedman's critique of Obama's first year where Friedman laments the disappearance of the President's "amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected". Mr. Friedman apparently misses the distinction between running for office and governing the country, but hey, 2 outa 3 ain't bad...
• Oh, and be sure to follow the dialog about what exactly the Tea Party movement is and where it came from, latest by Ben McGrath in The New Yorker.

Much (much) more over at The Hankster... Oh, and by the way, The Hankster also blogs at Donklephant. Check it out!