Opinion ID: 457052
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Republican Party's Challenge to Section 9-431

Text: 15 The Connecticut Republican Party (the Party) is comprised of individuals who associate for the common advancement of political beliefs and ideas. Its ultimate goal, as stated in the preamble to its Constitution, 3 is to seek out, designate, and secure the election of qualified candidates for public office at the Federal, State and Local levels of government, who will implement its policies, philosophies and programs. Correlative to this objective, the Party seeks to nominate those candidates who enjoy the broadest spectrum of popular support and, therefore, appear most likely to obtain electoral success at the polls. 16 In recent years, however, the Republican Party has been thwarted in its quest for electoral success. A contributing factor to its repeated November failures may be that there are far more registered Democrats than Republicans in Connecticut. Recent party registration figures underscore the magnitude of this disparity. At the time this action was commenced, 4 Connecticut had 659,268 registered Democrats, 425,695 registered Republicans, and 532,723 registered but unaffiliated voters. 17 Animated by the Democratic Party's statistical hegemony, and keenly aware of Connecticut's untapped reservoir of unaffiliated voters, the Republican Party's State Central Committee in August 1983 established a subcommittee to study the Party's existing rules, and devise a strategy to improve the Party's chances for future electoral success. After analyzing the Party's electoral plight, the subcommittee concluded that allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in Republican Party primaries would increase the Party's chances of winning general elections, ensure the nomination of candidates with greater bipartisan support, broaden the involvement of unaffiliated voters in the electoral process and strengthen the two-party system. To measure the support of this proposal among the Party's rank and file, State Republican Chairman Thomas D'Amore called a state party convention to consider, inter alia, proposed changes [in party rules] to allow unaffiliated voters to vote in Republican Party candidate selection primaries. 18 On January 14, 1984, delegates to the State Republican convention approved an amendment to the party rules permitting unaffiliated individuals to vote in Republican Party primaries for the offices of United States Senator, United States Representative, Governor and the gubernatorial underticket. 5 Specifically, the Party Rule provided: 19 Any elector enrolled as a member of the Republican Party and any elector not enrolled as a member of a party shall be eligible to vote in primaries for nomination of candidates for the offices of United States Senator, United States Representative, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of the State, Attorney General, Comptroller and Treasurer. 20 Because the Party Rule was in direct conflict with Section 9-431, which prohibits unaffiliated voters from voting in any party primary, Republican legislators sought to amend Section 9-431 during the 1984 session of the Connecticut General Assembly. To this end, in February 1984 State Representative Mae Schmidle introduced Bill No. 5525 (the Schmidle Bill), which provided in relevant part: 21 EXCEPT WHERE PROVIDED OTHERWISE BY STATE PARTY RULES, no person shall be permitted to vote at a primary of a party unless he is on the last-completed enrollment list of such party in the municipality or voting district.... 22 The Schmidle Bill was referred to the Committee on Governmental Administration and Elections, where debate focused on the practical difficulties that would accompany implementation of the provisions of the Bill. On February 28, 1984, Albert Lenge, Director and Elections Attorney in the Office of the Secretary of the State, appeared before the Committee and testified that implementation of the Party Rule would be workable. Despite Lenge's testimony, the Schmidle Bill fell prey to fierce Democratic opposition in the General Assembly. 6 23 Undaunted by the demise of the Schmidle Bill, Republican legislators sought alternate means to implement the Party Rule. Specifically, they drafted two amendments to Bill No. 5105, An Act Concerning the Time Limit for Enrollment of Unaffiliated Voters. The amendments provided that: 24 Where state party rules so provide, an elector whose name does not appear on any enrollment list shall be entitled to vote in a primary conducted by such party for nomination for election to the office of governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of the state, treasurer, comptroller, attorney general, senator or representative. 25 On April 11, 1984, both amendments were defeated decisively in the House, and the increasingly partisan tenor of this issue was manifest in the recorded vote. 7 One week later, a similar partisan struggle ensued on the floor of the Connecticut Senate. There, all twenty-three Senate Democrats voted against an amendment incorporating the provisions of the Schmidle Bill; all thirteen Republicans voted in support.