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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Paul Johnson, Former Mayor of City of Phoenix, on the benefits of open nonpartisan primaries
0:21:33
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144 sec
Paul Johnson, former Mayor of the City of Phoenix, advocates for open, nonpartisan primary elections.
He shares his experience running in both open and closed primary systems, stating that open primaries expose candidates to a wider range of voter perspectives and encourage finding common ground.
Johnson argues that partisan primaries lead to skewed viewpoints and make it harder for elected officials to address complex issues holistically.
Paul Johnson
0:21:33
Well, first, I'd like to thank the committee in the state or the city Of New York for taking a look at what I think is a very important issue.
0:21:41
I was the mayor of the city of Phoenix.
0:21:43
I am here to advocate for an open, nonpartisan primary.
0:21:48
Ranked choice voting or top two to me are are less important than opening the primary itself.
0:21:54
I've run-in both types of elections.
0:21:57
I've run both in an open primary as well as in a closed primary.
0:22:01
And I'll just give you a little bit of experience so that you can think about this.
0:22:05
When you run-in an open primary, basically, as a candidate, I ran I was a Democratic mayor and a Democratic council person.
0:22:13
But when you go run, you get a voting list of every Republican, every Democrat, and every Independent.
0:22:19
You knock on their doors.
0:22:20
You meet them.
0:22:21
You hear people with differing points of view.
0:22:25
When I became mayor, it was obvious to me that there was a connection between business and the ability to produce commerce and social programs.
0:22:34
That connection made sense.
0:22:36
But when you run-in a partisan primary, whether it's a Republican primary or a Democratic primary, what happens is when you go get a voting list, you don't go get a list of every voter.
0:22:46
You get a list only of those people who are in your party.
0:22:49
And worse yet, you get a list of those people who turn out in a low turnout primary election.
0:22:56
The result of that is that you end up with a much more skewed point of view, and it's problematic.
0:23:02
It's problematic for a city to be able to operate because both of those things are important.
0:23:07
What the two parties want you to believe is that either you have to be pro business or you have to be pro labor.
0:23:12
You have to be pro business or pro education.
0:23:15
You're pro God or you're pro human rights.
0:23:18
The thing that I've seen in running in a nonpartisan primary is how can you be pro business without being pro education?
0:23:26
How can you be pro labor without being pro business?
0:23:29
And I don't buy into it for a second that God isn't pro human rights.
0:23:33
These things can be connected, and what you do is you give a much greater latitude to your elected officials to talk about issues as they're important and to find common ground between people, which help make our governments more popular.
0:23:47
Again, I'd like to thank the committee for looking at this.
0:23:50
Certainly, I think a lot of other cities and states follow New York, so I hope that you're successful in this measure.