The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York's Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship

5. Murphy’s Law: The Direct Primary

72 5 Murphy’s Law The Direct Primary “All that is worst in our public life finds its readiest means of access to power through control of the nominating machinery of parties.” New York governor Charles Evans Hughes in his annual message to the state legislature,  No reform better symbolized the spirit of the Progressive era than the direct primary, and no state’s political parties more strenuously opposed it than New York’s. Tammany feared—and reformers believed—that direct popular control of nominations would fatally weaken the party machines. Tammany’s battle against the direct primary lasted for more than five years, culminating in that most desperate and drastic of all political attacks: impeachment. But it was a fight against the tide of history. In , New York adopted the direct primary, and reformers rejoiced. Yet today, it is not only reformers but party leaders who vigorously defend the direct primary system, which has changed little since . What explains their change of heart? “Whatever can go wrong,” states Murphy’s Law, “will go wrong.” And at least in large cities, party primary regulations went disastrously wrong for reformers, even if—as we shall see in Part —they seem unable to recognize it. Through the mid-s, parties in New York organized nominating meetings according to their own rules, paid the costs associated with them, and usually succeeded in controlling the outcome, though doing so sometimes required fraud, deception, intimidation, violence, or some combination thereof. Government had no role in the process, not even to count the ballots. Parties were private organizations, and who they chose to nominate was simply none of government’s business. Eventually, however, their excesses led to government intervention. In , New York and California became the first states to attempt to impose any regulations on primary meetings and elections, although New York’s law did not apply to New York City until , owing to Tammany’s mastery of legislative loopholes. Not that it mattered; the law changed nothing. In , the state legislature passed a law requiring parties to post notices of primary nominating meetings and provide each candidate with the right to appoint a poll watcher. It also required election inspectors, selected by the parties, to preside over nominations, keep a record of every voter, publicly announce the results immediately following the canvass, and file the returns with a city clerk. The new law allowed parties to set their own regulations for voting eligibility and contained enough other loopholes to render it wholly ineffective, as suggested by the following account of an  Tammany primary meeting: “In the th assembly district , the [newspaper] reporter attended from  to  P.M.; he saw people sitting about the room playing poker and other games of cards; the meeting was not called to order until : P.M. because the man with the ballots did not arrive. It was then moved that the secretary be authorized to cast one [vote] for the [entire] society; which, being done, the meeting was adjourned.” Momentum for reform of the primary process began building among the city’s independent Republicans in . In the previous year, many of them had supported Seth Low and the fusion ticket, but they now wanted to retain their regular standing in the party and thus their right to participate in primary nominating elections for state and federal offices. In the face of the Democratic party’s far superior strength and numbers, both regular and independent Republicans recognized the need to avoid internecine battles over regularity. To formalize the right of party members to support municipal fusion campaigns while remaining eligible to participate in state and federal primary nominations, the city’s independent Republican leaders formed a Committee of Fifty-three to propose new party rules recognizing those rights. Upstate Republicans took matters a step further, calling on Republican governor Frank S. Black to support a new law regulating primaries . Black’s poor record on civil service reform had hurt Republicans running in local races in , but now he and the Republican-led legislature MURPHY’S LAW 73 burnished their reform credentials by passing the first significant government regulations of primary elections. Under the new law, election officials employed by the government to oversee general elections would also administer primary elections. The officials’ new duties included choosing polling sites, establishing the date of election, and distributing to parties official ballots (which had never before existed...