It is hard to imagine a worse election for California’s business community than this year’s March primary. The next Legislature will be more anti-business than any Legislature since at least the middle 1970s.

There are a number of reasons why this is so. This election had the lowest turnout of voters in California history.  Just 20 years ago in the 1982 gubernatorial primary, 52 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Four years ago, 42 percent turned out.  The March 5 turnout was only 33 percent. We now have a democracy without citizenship.

There are many reasons for the low turnout, not the least of which is the permanent March primary, a misguided product of our urge to be a player in presidential politics. This should be the last March primary ever. Senator Ross Johnson (R-Orange County) has a bill with bipartisan support to divide the presidential primary from the primary for other state offices and to move the state primary to September.  That way we could vote for president early and for other offices at a later primary, as most states do.

Then there is the matter of who did and who did not vote. With few exceptions, only the most partisan voters turned out, and again with few exceptions the most extreme candidates were the ones nominated. This is especially true among the Democrats, where the so-called “progressives” triumphed in most close primaries.

While Governor Gray Davis might argue that as a centrist Democrat, he wants a strong business climate to create jobs, the “progressives” view the corporate world as predators that must be restrained for the benefit of consumers. Trial lawyers were major backers of the “progressive” cause because the current Assembly has killed several bills to expand their power to bring lawsuits against business.

The next Assembly will probably see an increase of about five anti-corporate Democrats in the Democratic caucus, and an equal decline among the so-called “moderate” Democrats.  The ratio between the two parties will not change that much because all seats were drawn to be safe for the incumbent party in the 2001 redistricting, but the intraparty dynamics will change a lot, especially among the Democrats.

Just one example: State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles), who helped bankroll the “progressive” campaign, is the leading candidate to replace the lame-duck Senate president pro tem, John Burton (D-San Francisco). There is no question that trial lawyers and others on the left will fare better in the next Legislature than they have in this one. After all, to the victors go the spoils, and the victors in the Democratic primaries were those farthest to the left.

As an example: JobsPAC and other pro-business groups tried to impact the Democratic primaries on behalf of more moderate candidates, but with little success.  JobsPAC spent $387,000 for independent expenditures in four Democratic primaries and lost three. Californians for Common Sense, consisting of beer distributors, Chevron/Texaco and Sempra Energy, spent $375,000 on five Democratic primaries and lost all five. On the other hand, the California Alliance, funded by trial lawyers, the League of Conservation Voters, and California Nurses Association, the main “progressive” independent expenditures committee, spent $683,000 and won four of six Democratic primaries.

All this occurred because the extremely low March turnout came at a time when California was forced to return to a closed primary. If business wants to blame someone for this miserable state of affairs, they can blame Justice Antonin Scalia and his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court. They overturned California’s open primary law.

That law, Proposition 198 passed in 1996, allowed any voter to vote for any candidate in a primary election. The dynamic was that in safe districts, voters from the less dominant party voted in the primary of the more dominant party, and this tended to moderate the eventual winner.

As a result of the incumbent gerrymander of districts enacted in 2001, almost all legislative districts in California are dominated by one party or the other – there are almost no marginal districts – and there will be almost no fall legislative contests. The Legislature nominated in March will be the one that takes office after November.

If the primary is closed, in a gerrymandered legislative district, in a low-turnout election, do not be surprised if only the party activists turn out to vote. And the party activists will nominate the most liberal Democrats in a Democratic primary and the most conservative Republicans in a Republican primary.

The Republicans are less of a factor in this equation because they do not divide on business issues; the divisions among Republican candidates are on social issues such as abortion rights. But among Democrats, the big issue in several primaries was whether you were pro- or anti-business. The anti-business position generally came down to the need for more government regulation to protect consumers, more opportunities for consumers to file class-action lawsuits, and increasing the tax load on business and high-income individuals rather than cutting budgets in tight economic times.

Thanks to these dynamics, business can look forward to a more hostile Legislature next year, especially in the Assembly, regardless of who is elected governor.