Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Open primaries? Republicans move to make Utah voting even more insular.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox

The legislation's sponsors were inspired by Spencer Cox's near-loss in the the 2020 Republican gubernatorial primary.

The movement to weaken the major parties' hold on primaries, the de facto elections in much of this politically polarized nation, has been dealt a fresh setback in Utah.

Gov. Spencer Cox is expected to sign legislation, which won final passage this week from his fellow Republicans in dominant control of the Legislature, to prevent Utahns from switching parties within three months of a primary.

The stated goal is to sharply limit "party raiding" by Democrats interested in setting the shade of red for the state's map by voting in GOP primaries — assuming their motivation will only be disrupting the opposing party's genuine desires, not shaping the state's power structure. But good-government advocates argue primaries should be open to all, on the theory that governments will be more consensus-driven and productive if candidates have to appeal to people of all stripes in their nominating campaigns, not just their bases on the hard left or hard right.


The bill wouldn't affect the Democrats, because in Utah their primaries are already open to all registered voters.

The Senate cleared the measure 22-3 on Wednesday. The House had passed it 41-30 last month. It would bar anyone who changes partisan registration after March 31 from voting in that year's primaries, normally at the end of June. In a partial victory for open primary advocates, the original bill was amended to allow independents to align with one of the big parties until the last minute, but it would inhibit members of minor parties.

Sponsors said they were spurred to action by last year's hard-fought GOP primary for governor. Jon Huntsman, who had been ambassador to Russia and China and ran for president in 2012, actively recruited voters of all stripes to help him reclaim the governorship but lost the nomination to Cox, then the lieutenant governor, by 6,300 votes. (Cox won in the fall by 2-to-1.)

Republican conservatives asserted that Democrats flooding to the more moderate Huntsman had almost cost the party it's more ideologically appropriate choice. But a study by Princeton's Electoral Innovation Lab concluded that unaffiliated voters were the vast majority of the tens of thousands who joined the GOP in time to vote in the closed primary.

The term "party raiding" was coined by the majority in a 1973 Supreme Court case affirming the constitutionality of closed primary systems.

The United Utah Party lambasted the Legislature for "working overtime to satisfy partisan interests instead of the will of the electorate," adding: "As undemocratic as that is, it's made worse by the fact that the Republican primaries are funded by all taxpayers in Utah, not just the Republican ones."

Read More

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

Capitol building, Washington, DC

Unsplash/Getty Images

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.

It’s what they call an "80-20 issue," and yet neither party is standing up for the 80% as they prioritize control of Congress.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

The White House and money

AI generated image

Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

In the United States, where the free market has long been exalted as the supreme engine of prosperity, a peculiar irony is taking shape. On August 22, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the federal government had acquired a stake of just under 10% in Intel, instantly making itself the company’s largest shareholder. The stake - roughly 433 million shares, valued at about $8.9 billion, purchased at $20.47 each - was carved out of the Biden-era CHIPS Act subsidies and repackaged as equity. Formally, it is a passive, non-voting stake, with no board seat or governance rights. Yet symbolism matters: Washington now sits, however discreetly, in Intel’s shareholder register. Soon afterward, reports emerged that Samsung, South Korea’s industrial giant, had also been considered for similar treatment. What once would have been denounced as creeping socialism in Washington is now unfolding under Donald Trump, a president who boasts of his devotion to private enterprise but increasingly embraces tactics that blur the line between capitalism and state control.

The word “nationalization,” for decades associated with postwar Britain, Latin American populists, or Arab strongmen, is suddenly back in circulation - but this time applied to the citadel of capitalism itself. Trump justifies the intervention as a matter of national security and economic patriotism. Subsidies, he argues, are wasteful. Tariffs, in his view, are a stronger tool for forcing corporations to relocate factories to U.S. soil. Yet the CHIPS Act, that bipartisan legacy of the Biden years, remains in force and politically untouchable, funneling billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor projects. Rather than scrap it, Trump has chosen to alter the terms: companies that benefit from taxpayer largesse must now cede equity to the state. Intel, heavily reliant on those funds, has become the test case for this new model of American industrial policy.

Keep ReadingShow less